I'm a third year graduate student studying how the brain develops specific connections
in both development and following injury to the system. When I'm not at the lab running my experiments, I'm normally at my apartment running culinary experiments from recipes that I either get from friends, other food blogs, or online (I regularly troll Epicurious and allrecipes). While I've always been interested in biology, my love for food and experiencing good, unique foods, ocurred during my undergraduate years where I took up cooking as a hobby and as a stress-reliever. This hobby has turned into an ongoing love-affair that has transformed into trying various recipes at home, to sampling different cuisines while out and about southern
California. My love for all things science and food has been the spearhead of this blog.
And who wouldn't love food?!
Food has so many dimensions, especially in terms of how it relates to science.
1. Food and health: certain foods are great for increasing our well being in preventing disease progression. Think about how many studies are out there about the benefits of red wine, dark chocolate, blueberries or other antioxidant-rich "superfoods" that are published every year (one review of many: Parletta et al., 2013, Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry). We eat certain foods to gain more muscle, be healthier. Then, there's the flip side - how diets rich in saturated fat increase cholesterol and are linked to increased risk of heart disease.
2. Food and emotion: probably one of my best childhood memories was Saturday mornings catching up with my family on daily news over a warm bowl of hu tieu. My mom would make a large vat of delicious pork broth and serve rice noodles over seafood and fresh scallions, bean sprouts and herbs. Now, whenever I have hu tieu at a restaurant, or make it at my apartment, I'm always thinking back on being with my family, comforted by loved ones. Whether it's remembering an important personal event, or remembering an important person, food can illicit some of the strongest emotions. We eat because we're sad, happy, angry, or even just bored. Emotions ranging from extreme pleasure to intense rage are all processed in a subcortical region called the amygdala. Even though the amygdala is most well known for encoding fearful memories, strong emotions can activate the amygdala. Food can even evoke some of the best pleasures known to life - ever experience a "foodgasm?" Whether it's reflecting back on the nostalgic feelings of having hu tieu (seafood noodle soup) crafted by my mom, or enjoying an omakase meal for your birthday, emotional memories of all kinds, even food-related, are encoded in some part by the amygdala.
3. Food and the brain: how exactly is food encoded in our brain? The basis of food relies on the different flavors that come together to make things like a sweet bread pudding, tangy tartare, or savory pesto. Taste itself follows a one cell to one tasting code in order for the information to be neurally processed in our primary taste cortex, the insula. Researchers have even discovered a "map" that has different flavor profiles mapped out in the insula (Chen et al., 2011, Science). The insula isn't the only brain region that's responsible for encoding our perception of food - other parts of the neocortex like the orbitofrontal cortex and subcortical areas like the nucleus accumbens and amygdala are important for our perception of food and pleasure behind scarfing down that umpteenth cookie (reviewed in Berridge et al., 2010, Brain Research - neural regions important for taste reviewed, not why I ate that extra few cookies). All these brain regions collectively compute together all our sensory food information and are responsible for generating that immense pleasure behind digging into a decadent tiramisu after dinner.
Long rant, I know. I promise that this is the last time I ramble about why I love food (hopefully). But you get the general idea behind this blog, and hopefully, you can see the rationale behind the title "amygdaleats." Tune in for more posts ranging from fun recipes to try, interesting reviews on science articles pertaining to food science, or just random postings related to foods!
References:
Parletta et al., 2013. Nutritional modulation of cognitive function and mental health. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. May 2; 24 (5): 725-43.
Chen et al., 2011. A gustotopic map of taste qualities in the mammalian brain. Science. Sep 2; 333 (6047): 1262-6.
Berridge et al., 2010. The tempted brain eats: pleasure and desire circuits in obesity and eating disorders. Brain Research. Sep 2; 1350: 43-64.
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