The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat

by Stephan Guyenet

A young woman stares intently at a computer screen in Leonard Epstein’s lab at the University at Buffalo in New York. She’s playing a slot machine computer game. Each time she clicks the mouse button, three columns of shapes spin on the screen and then settle. If the shapes are different from one another, she gets nothing—but if they line up, she gets a point. While it may sound like she’s goofing off, in fact she’s participating in a series of fascinating studies that are beginning to shed light on why some people become obese and others don’t. Once she earns two points, she gets a small piece of a candy bar. While she only needs two points to receive a candy bar the first time, the next time, she must earn four points to receive the same candy bar, and then eight. “We keep increasing the work requirements,” explains Epstein, “until eventually the person says, ‘Jeez, it’s just not worth it.’” The number of responses she’s willing to make before quitting quantifies how hard she’s willing to work for food.56

a human model of the lever press studiesin rodents!