CAS BI 107 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Color Vision, Karl Von Frisch, Drosophila Melanogaster
4 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Human taste, food choice and fitness: this is an evolutionary model of perception and behavior. Consider when human feeding adaptation occurred, present-day consequences, and mechanisms involved: What was the environment of evolutionary adaptation: evolved to eat fatty and salty foods because most energy content in distant human past, this mechanism is still within humans today, diet drives genetic change: o ex. Eating brain activity dopamine neurotransmitter is released (associated with the sensation of pleasure) pleasure is achieved (sensation of pleasure reinforces the cycle of eating over and over again) o natural selection, diet, and feeding behavior. Nutrition is important to fitness, human populations differ genetically in relation to diet, genes regulate weight gain/loss, ghrelin regulates appetite, leptin regulates satiation, taste receptors (bitter, sour, salty, sweet, fatty, etc), brain circuits control eating. Why do we crave salty/fatty foods sodium is important to physiological processes as salt is sodium chloride and chloride is an electrolyte, retention of water.
