ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the food-related signals that are received by the brain, the brain structures involved, and the types of integration of those signals that occurs to guide our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. It reviews the conscious sensations of smell and taste, and the largely unconscious signals that arise internally from our digestive tract or gut. The brain areas that receive the action potentials arriving in thousands of axons from the mitral cells have to decode these signals. The simplest form of cell-to-cell signaling is via signal molecules that are secreted or released by one cell and are recognized by specific receptors for those molecules on the surface of or inside the recipient or target cell(s). The signals to the brain are of two main types: Action potentials in sensory afferents of the vagus nerve and specific hormones that are released into the blood stream as a result of specific enteroendocrine cell stimulation.
