Hunger, control

Hydroxy tryptamine, or serotonin, is a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system (CNS). The nerve-cell bodies of the major serotoninergic neurones are in the midline raphe nuclei of the rostral pons, and ascending fibers innervate the basal ganglia, hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus, limbic forebrain, and areas of the cerebral cortex. The serotoninergic system plays an important role in the control of mood and behavior, motor activity, hunger, thermoregulation, sleep, certain hallucinatory states, and some neuro-endocrine mechanisms. 

Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin have other responsibilities in the body besides dictating hunger. For example, norepinephrine also helps control blood pressure. Drugs that affect the level of these neurotransmitters interfere with other body processes and produce negative side effects. A drug that increases norepinephrine will decrease appetite, but... 

Figure 3.1 Appetite is controlled by many body processes, as shown here. The arrows indicate things that increase and decrease hunger. All of these processes work by sending signals to the brain to indicate a feeling of hunger or satiety (fullness). Certain diet pills called appetite suppressants may work in the same way as some of these body processes, by sending signals to the brain that indicate satiety and say stop eating ...

There can be little doubt that wider use of the proper fungicides and pesticides on tropical food crops could do much to alleviate the hunger and poverty of many people. But there are several reasons why this development will probably be slow. First of all, accurate information on the nature and control of local pests is lacking for much of the tropics. Recommendations too often are based on experience in the... 

The main difference between hungers and emotions has been that hungers are more obviously controlled by the deprivation or supply of specific concrete stimuli. Even so, hungers for specific objects are extensively influenced by learned processes called tastes, and thus have some of the cultural specificity typical of emotions. To develop a taste for yak butter or blubber you must leam to associate their fatty flavor with satisfaction to develop a taste for an abused substance, you must come to associate the chemical taste of alcohol or the disgust and nausea of heroin injection with the euphoria of the high. 

In two-factor theory, hungers and other appetites must be elicited by stimuli that are outside of the person s control. If the theory s other assumptions were true, this tenet would be both possible and necessary. It would be possible because two-factor theory holds appetites to be special kinds of processes that initially depend on innate releasing stimuli but that can come to be elicited by arbitrary cues through pairing alone. It would be necessary in the case of aversive appetites, because, with conventional exponential discounting, there is no other mechanism to make a person generate them. The easiest cure for fear... 

Carlson, A. J. 1916. "The Relation of Hunger to Appetite." In The Control of Hunger in Health and Disease. Chicago University of Chicago Press. 

Entactogene and hallucinogenic amphetamines, furthermore, have an effect on the serotonin system by increasing the availability of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that controls sleep, mood, emotion, memory, perception, sexual behavior, and hunger [14],... 

Teitelbaum and Stellar, 1954 Teitelbaum and Epstein, 1962b). Theories proliferated in terms of complex systems of the hypothalamus involved in the control of motivational behaviors, with much discussion of whether there was need to infer multiple distinct circuits for the control of different motivational states, such as hunger, thirst, sexual drive, exploration, play, fear and anxiety, or whether by contrast there was some integrating principle that could bring these components together into a common unifying process such as activation or arousal (Valenstein et al., 1970). 

In the natural state, populations of wildlife tend to increase and decrease in cycles. Humans, however, have changed so much of the natural environment for our own use that the natural cycles for wildlife are no longer a constant. Thus, animals such as deer often die slowly in agony from hunger, cold, or disease frequently caused by overpopulation in a restricted environment. Hunters harvest animals under the control of wildlife scientists. Tranquil-... 

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