Eating when you’re not hungry—especially high-calorie, high-fat foods—may no

游客2023-12-03  18

问题     Eating when you’re not hungry—especially high-calorie, high-fat foods—may not always rise to the newly broadened clinical definition of an eating disorder. But the behavior that for many Americans is a routine pastime certainly contributes to excess weight gain, with its implications for health. And it is considered "disordered eating" by most mental health professionals.
    A study published on Thursday in the journal Science adds to evidence that binge eating—and overeating generally—may have a biological basis. The new research, conducted on mice, suggests a target in the brain that drug developers should consider in exploring treatments for such disordered eating.
    Not surprisingly, researchers focused their attention on the hypothalamus, one of the brain’s most primitive structures, a key node in the brain circuitry that drives us to eat and drink, to seek out sexual partners, and generally to crave more of what makes us feel good. From its seat in the brain’s deepest recesses, the lateral hypothalamus is lashed up to the amygdala, where basic, powerful emotions such as fear, anger and love are processed.
    As part of the limbic system, these structures evolved early in the rise of mammals to ensure that the necessities for survival and reproduction got top billing in behavior.
    In the 1960s, neuroscientists electrically stimulated the lateral hypothalamus and saw that it played a key role in feeding behavior, and in the reinforcement of feeding behavior. But how it did that remained a mystery.
    To explore how the lateral hypothalamus governs eating behavior, a group of researchers from the University of North Carolina used mice and a relatively new technique: To discern how certain cells work, they genetically engineered the cells to respond to light: then, they turned those cells on and off, essentially, with a miniature flashlight, and watched the resulting behavior.
    The researchers applied the on-off treatment to a group of cells in the amygdala and their projections into the lateral hypothalamus. They hypothesized that the cells, called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, interact with the hypothalamus to regulate eating.
    Sure enough, when they "turned on" these unique cells in mice who were well fed, the result was rapid and striking: The animals immediately launched into "voracious feeding behavior". And the mice clearly enjoyed the impulse to pig out: They showed a clear preference for being in the space they associated with having the cells turned on.
    Moreover, given the choice, the animals made a beeline to high-fat, high-calorie foods.
    The trick worked more dramatically when the mice’s food was restricted and they were then allowed to eat at will. But even when the mice were well fed, those with the targeted cells turned on continued to eat well after they would have been filled up.
    Research has suggested that stress, genes and environmental factors, such as the ubiquity of high-calorie, high-fat foods, all may trigger overeating. But if future therapies aim to fortify the vulnerable against those triggers, they might well focus on the special cells targeted here, the researchers said. [br] What can be implied from the research?

选项 A、A person whose parents have got the eating disorder may overeat.
B、A person who overeats has to receive a therapy.
C、Special cells have to be changed to cure eating disorder.
D、It doesn’t matter if we overeat something with low-calorie.

答案 A

解析 推理判断题。最后一段第一句提到Research has suggested that stress,genes and environmentalfactors,such as the ubiquity of high-calorie,high—fat foods,all may trigger overeating.由此可知,压力、基因与环境因素等都可导致过度饮食。[A]“若家长饮食失调,孩子也可能会饮食过量”,定位句中所提到的genes和该选项提及的内容一致,所以[A]为正确答案。[B]“饮食过量的人不得不接受治疗”,文中没有提及治疗的事,故排除;[C]“特殊的细胞不得不被更换以治疗饮食失调”,文中没有提及饮食失调的治疗方法,故排除;[D]“如果我们过量地摄人一些低热量的食物是没有关系的”,文中说饮食过量是不好的饮食行为,但并没有细说与食物热量的关系,故排除。
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