Like many animals, snails love sugar and usually begin to eat it as soon as they see. But thanks to a specially "disgusting" training, they can refuse him, even when hungry. This found a team of biologists from Sussek University in the UK. Scientists gave sugar snails, and then lambly knocked on the head when the animals stretched to him. It made them avoid delicacy. Details of the experiment are published in the journal Current Biology.
After tests, the researchers checked that the animals prompted the sweets. They found a neural mechanism that changed the usual reaction of snails on sugar.
Dr. Ildiko Kenenes, author, explained that there are neurons in the brain snail, which suppress standard food habits. This ensures that the animal will not eat everything in its path. But when the snail sees sugar, the work of this neuron will slow down. So the mollusk appears the opportunity to have a delicacy. After training, the effect changes: neurons are excited, and not suppressed - so animals are unsubscribed from sugar.
When the researchers discovered such a reaction, offered snails instead of sugar a piece of cucumber. The mollusks calmly fir him - it turned out that the neural "switch" works only at the sight of those products that the snails have learned to reject. In addition, when neurons - "switches" were removed from the brain of the snails, the animals began to have sugar again.
George Kemsenes, a member of the research team, said that the snails are the basic model of the human brain. "The effect of an inhibitory neuron, which suppresses the supply chain by the snail, reminds how the cortical networks are under inhibitory control in the human brain. It is necessary to avoid "fluent" activation, which can provoke overeating and obesity, "explained the scientist.
That is, by analogy, negative experience with food leads to the fact that we are not able to even digest the idea to eat a particular dish again. "Certain neurons groups change their activity in accordance with the negative association of certain foods," the biologists summarized.
Source: Naked Science