Why is the late night instant noodles so attractive?

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At 11 o'clock in the middle of the night, the students in the dormitory soaked a bucket of instant noodles.

Recently, an article titled "Hunger enhances food-odour attraction through a neuropeptide Y spotlight" published by researchers from Harvard Medical School in the top journal "Nature" revealed that the sense of smell can pass through AGRP neurons in the brain under hunger.

The researchers chose mice as the experimental subjects, and put volatile food odors and pheromones (urine of heterosexual mice) in the test field.

Previous studies have shown that the expression of agouti-related peptide (AGRP) of hypothalamic neurons help produce hunger, so the question researchers, light AGRP neurons bioon.

AGRP neurons release the three main neurotransmitters AGRP, NPY or GABA, so the researchers once again questioned which neurotransmitter is needed in the choice of odor.

The NPY receptor is composed of five G protein-coupled receptors.

In summary, this study determined the olfactory system's preference for odor under specific neuronal mechanisms in the brain.