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Eating ice cream makes people happy, but many don't know the chemistry behind the way it makes us feel. So, there is almost never any winner when it comes to arguments on the topic. If you enjoy winning, read on below for what scientists have to say about the link between I've cream and happiness.
By Cookist
If you're sad, you eat an ice cream. It is a theory that has always worked in the past; however, not many people, with the exception of the nerds, know how this works.
Some would even argue that junk food does nothing except excite your taste buds. However, they have been wrong because scientists have found that eating ice cream really does flood you with happiness.
Apparently, the human brain responds to consuming ice cream the same way it would to listening to your favorite track or even winning the lottery.
According to Neuroscientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London who have examined the brain activity of folks while they ate ice cream, the effect lights up the same parts of your brain that get activated when you experience pleasurable feelings.
The whole phenomenon takes place in the orbitofrontal cortex, which seems to be directly involved in the representation of the emotional aspects of food items.
The scientists employed the use of an fMRI scanner, which detects local shifts in blood flow in areas of the brain that are engaged in one mental exercise or the other.
Brain cells called neurons are dependent on a good supply of nutrients, so when a particular area is processing a specific sensory input, those of them present in the primary taste cortex double up on their activity which results in an increase in blood supply to that part of the brain.
Still interested? Yes? Good. From the results gleaned from the fMRI, scientists discovered that sinking your teeth into delicious ice cream activates the portion of the human brain known as the Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which indicates positive emotional pleasure and reward value of the ice cream.
So next time you recommend ice cream after a particularly draining experience, you know you have scientific evidence to back you up.
