Richard J. Stevenson

Hunger and starvation have significantly shaped the human condition. The imprints of past famines continue to cast lasting shadows on our evolutionary relationship with food, highlighting starvation as a powerful cognitive force. This book explores the nature of human hunger primarily from a psychological perspective, covering its basis in the brain, its critical dependence on learning and memory, and the dramatic effect of starvation on morality and behaviour. It connects the biology and psychology of hunger with historical and social examples including hunger strikers, hunger artists, disordered eating, and hunger as a weapon. Human experimental studies of deep starvation are also analysed, alongside case studies of the 'super hungers' in Prader-Willi syndrome, binge eating, and dementia. Delivering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary picture of human hunger and starvation, this book is an ideal resource for students and researchers interested in ingestive behaviour from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Hunger and starvation have significantly shaped the human condition. The imprints of past famines continue to cast lasting shadows on our evolutionary relationship with food, highlighting starvation as a powerful cognitive force. This book explores the nature of human hunger primarily from a psychological perspective, covering its basis in the brain, its critical dependence on learning and memory, and the dramatic effect of starvation on morality and behaviour. It connects the biology and psychology of hunger with historical and social examples including hunger strikers, hunger artists, disordered eating, and hunger as a weapon. Human experimental studies of deep starvation are also analysed, alongside case studies of the 'super hungers' in Prader-Willi syndrome, binge eating, and dementia. Delivering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary picture of human hunger and starvation, this book is an ideal resource for students and researchers interested in ingestive behaviour from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Everybody eats, and what we eat – or do not – affects the brain and mind. There is significant general, applied, academic, and industry interest about nutrition and the brain, yet there is much misinformation and no single reliable guide. Diet Impacts on Brain and Mind provides a comprehensive account of this emerging multi-disciplinary science, exploring the acute and chronic impacts of human diet on the brain and mind. It has a primarily human focus and is broad in scope, covering wide-ranging topics like brain development, whole diets, specific nutrients, research methodology, and food as a drug. It is written in an accessible format and is of interest to undergraduate and graduate students studying nutritional neuroscience and related disciplines, healthcare professionals with an applied interest, industry researchers seeking topic overviews, and interested general readers.

Everybody eats, and what we eat – or do not – affects the brain and mind. There is significant general, applied, academic, and industry interest about nutrition and the brain, yet there is much misinformation and no single reliable guide. Diet Impacts on Brain and Mind provides a comprehensive account of this emerging multi-disciplinary science, exploring the acute and chronic impacts of human diet on the brain and mind. It has a primarily human focus and is broad in scope, covering wide-ranging topics like brain development, whole diets, specific nutrients, research methodology, and food as a drug. It is written in an accessible format and is of interest to undergraduate and graduate students studying nutritional neuroscience and related disciplines, healthcare professionals with an applied interest, industry researchers seeking topic overviews, and interested general readers.

Written by a neurobiologist and a psychologist, this volume presents a new theory of olfactory perception. Drawing on research in neuroscience, physiology, and ethology, Donald A. Wilson and Richard J. Stevenson address the fundamental question of how we navigate through a world of chemical encounters and provide a compelling alternative to the "reception-centric" view of olfaction. The major research challenge in olfaction is determining how the brain discriminates one smell from another. Here, the authors hold that olfaction is generally not a simple physiochemical process, but rather a plastic process that is strongly tied to memory. They find the traditional approach-which involves identifying how particular features of a chemical stimulus are represented in the olfactory system-to be at odds with historical data and with a growing body of neurobiological and psychological evidence that places primary emphasis on synthetic processing and experiential factors. Wilson and Stevenson propose that experience and cortical plasticity not only are important for traditional associative olfactory memory but also play a critical, defining role in odor perception and that current views are insufficient to account for current and past data. The book includes a broad comparative overview of the structure and function of olfactory systems, an exploration into the mechanisms of odor detection and olfactory perception, and a discussion of the implications of the authors' theory. Learning to Smell will serve as an important reference for workers within the field of chemical senses and those interested in sensory processing and perception.