Palatability (or palatableness) is the hedonic reward (which is

pleasure Pleasure is experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment of something. It contrasts with pain or suffering, which are forms of feeling bad. It is closely related to value, desire and action: humans and other conscious animals find ...

taste The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste. Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth biochemistry, reacts chemically with taste receptor cells l ...

in this case) provided by foods or drinks that are agreeable to the "

palate The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sep ...

", which often varies relative to the homeostatic satisfaction of

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemistry, biochemical and physiology, physiological process by which an organism uses food and water to support its life. The intake of these substances provides organisms with nutrients (divided into Macronutrient, macro- ...

al and/or

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

needs. The palatability of a dish or beverage, unlike its flavor or

, varies with the state of an individual: it is lower after consumption and higher when deprived. It has increasingly been appreciated that this can create a hunger that is independent of homeostatic needs.

Brain mechanism

The palatability of a substance is determined by opioid receptor-related processes in the

nucleus accumbens The nucleus accumbens (NAc or NAcc; also known as the accumbens nucleus, or formerly as the ''nucleus accumbens septi'', Latin for ' nucleus adjacent to the septum') is a region in the basal forebrain rostral to the preoptic area of the hypo ...

and ventral pallidum. The opioid processes involve mu opioid receptors and are present in the rostromedial shell part of the nucleus accumbens on its spiny neurons. This area has been called the "opioid eating site". The rewardfulness of consumption associated with palatability is dissociable from desire or incentive value which is the motivation to seek out a specific commodity. Desire or incentive value is processed by opioid receptor-related processes in the basolateral amygdala. Unlike the liking palatability for food, the

incentive salience Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that ''motivates'' or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of b ...

wanting is not downregulated by the physiological consequences of food consumption and may be largely independent of homoeostatic processes influencing food intake. Though the wanting of incentive salience may be informed by palatability, it is independent and not necessarily reduced to it. It has been suggested that a third system exists that links opioid processes in the two parts of the brain: "Logically this raises the possibility that a third system, with which the accumbens shell, ventral pallidum, and basolateral amygdala are associated, distributes the affective signals elicited by specific commodities across distinct functional systems to control reward seeking... At present we do not have any direct evidence for a system of this kind, but indirect evidence suggests it may reside within the motivationally rich circuits linking hypothalamic and

brainstem The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stalk-like part of the brain that connects the cerebrum with the spinal cord. In the human brain the brainstem is composed of the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The midbrain is conti ...

viscerogenic structures such as the parabrachial nucleus. It has also been suggested that hedonic hunger can be driven both in regard to "wanting" and "liking" and that a palatability subtype of neuron may also exist in the basolateral amygdala.

Satiety and palatability

Appetite Appetite is the desire to eat food items, usually due to hunger. Appealing foods can stimulate appetite even when hunger is absent, although appetite can be greatly reduced by satiety. Appetite exists in all higher life-forms, and serves to reg ...

is controlled by a direct loop and an indirect one. In both the direct and indirect loops there are two feedback mechanisms. First a positive feedback involving its stimulation by palatability food cues, and second, a

negative feedback Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function (Mathematics), function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is feedback, fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused ...

due to satiation and satiety cues following ingestion. In the indirect loop these cues are learnt by association such as meal plate size and work by modulating the potency of the cues of the direct loop. The influence of these processes can exist without subjective awareness. The cessation of a desire to eat after a meal "satiation" is likely to be due to different processes and cues. More palatable foods reduce the effects of such cues upon satiation causing a larger food intake, exploited in hyperpalatable food. In contrast, unpalatability of certain foods can serve as a deterrent from feeding on those foods in the future. For example, the variable checkerspot butterfly contains

iridoid Iridoids are a type of monoterpenoids in the general form of cyclopentanopyran, found in a wide variety of plants and some animals. They are biosynthetically derived from 8-oxogeranial. Iridoids are typically found in plants as glycosides, mo ...

compounds that are unpalatable to avian predators, thus reducing the risk of

predation Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

References

{{reflist Behavioral neuroscience Gustation Gustatory system

Brain mechanism

Satiety and palatability

See also

References