Hungers, specific

Even lists that do include an appreciation for function, such as Plutchik s (1980), often neglect essential motives such as hunger (Table 3). I am suggesting, then, that emotions be identified partly in terms of their specific adaptive value. 

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. 

Hungers are motivated processes that in turn motivate seeking specific objects of consumption. 

Rozin, P. and Kalat, J. W. (1971) Specific hungers and poison avoidance as adaptive specializations of learning. Psychol Rev 78, 459 86. 

Participants may feel very loving toward one another, but the feelings are not explicitly sexual because MDA tends to decrease the desire for orgasm. For many people the experience of enjoying physical contact and feeling love with others in the absence of a specific hunger for sex is unique and welcome ... 

The chemotactic response to cAMP of the slime mould Dictyostelium discoideum is presented as an example. When these cells are starving, they sense cAMP signals, and in response to the hunger signal, cAMP, the cells differentiate (reviewed in ref. 67). In Dictyostelium discoideum the response to cAMP is mediated by G-protein-coupled hepta-helical receptors and is transmitted by the Py subunits of a heterotrimeric G protein. In response to the chemoattractant, cAMP, a homologue of PKB (protein kinase B) is rapidly activated by phosphorylation througji a Ptdins kinase specific for the 3-OH position (see also Chapter 4). 

Intravenous infusion of an octapeptide derivative of CCK decreases the level of hunger and reduces food intake in normal subjects (Kissileff et al. 1981). This effect is reversed by loxiglumide, a specific CCK-A antagonist (Gutzwiller et al. 2000). 

Some proteins activate transcription by directly contacting RNA polymerase. For example, cyclic AMP, a hunger signal, stimulates the transcription of many catabolic operons by binding to the catabolite activator protein. The binding of the cAMP—CAP complex to a specific site in the promoter region of an inducible catabolic operon enhances the binding of RNA polymerase and the initiation of transcription. 

The Dutch Hunger Winter, in short, provided one of the major sources of evidence for a new idea in the understanding of later health and disease. This idea forms the hypothetical background for this chapter s focus on specific factors inside and outside the fetal environment that influence, and sometimes disrupt, fetal development. 

Following are some specific actions which must be taken if we wish to alleviate hunger and poverty ... 

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