Yes, your brain remembers how you got food poisoning

Everyone has that one food they can not have after having had a horrible food poisoning experience with it. Luckier people have one, but it is also not uncommon that the few truly unlucky people experience the “food poisoning followed by a major avoidance” for a few food items at once.

Researchers found that not only it is true how you remember the unpleasant food experience, but your brain has a storage for it: The central amygdala.

The brain stores food poisoning experience for the future

The journal Nature has hosted the research carried out by Christopher Zimmerman on mice about food poisoning and the brain. The interest for the research is rooted in hoping to figure out further information about how the brain avoids sickening foods.

In the experiment, mice were given grape flavored Kool-aid, and then injected with a symptom manifesting compound that mimics food poisoning. And throughout the poisoning, the central amygdala was found to be active. The biggest answer the experiment found was that the same part of the brain was then again active when the mice encountered grape flavored Kool-aid again. The next step for the mice was to avoid the drink altogether.

The central amygdala is involved in storing emotional and fear-filled experiences. It also receives a lot of input to process from the environment including smells and tastes. 

The experiment simulated the same cells in the test subjects, and the response was the same as avoiding food. 

The main aim of the experiment however, is not entirely about how we “store food poisoning”. For the foreseeable future, your brain will probably still remember the food poisoning you had, and avoid it. However, the research will ideally explore ways to leverage this connection to solve problems in other forms of connection between the brain, and various events.

Image by Gaspar Uhas via Unsplash