Watching an Olympic victory or a winning shot in Wimbledon is a big thrill, isn't it? Well, the news is that our brain reads those stimuli the same way it would with a forkful of spaghetti. After all, in our hearts it has always been clear that pasta makes us happy. Numerous nutritional studies have shown, for example, that thanks to the supply of tryptophan, a good dish of spaghetti stimulates endorphins and good mood. What was not known, however, is that there is also an emotional and neurophysiological mechanism underlying psychophysical well-being that is experienced by eating a plate of pasta, which for the first time has been investigated and measured scientifically. This is revealed by an Italian study, by the "Behavior & Brain Lab" of the Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM, which has been carried out for Italian pasta makers of Unione Italiana Food. It is the first time that scientific research has investigated the rewarding emotional sphere to understand how, how much and why we are happy when we eat a plate of pasta, tracing what a good forkful of spaghetti "sparks" in our brain. To do this, the researchers used neuroscientific and brain tracking methodologies like those used for the polygraph (the analysis of facial expressions, brain activations linked to emotions, heart rate variation and micro-sweating) on a sample of 40 subjects (20 women and 20 men) aged between 25 and 55 years and without food allergies or intolerances. The study thus identified the type of emotional reaction and the relative degree of involvement of tasting a plate of pasta, compared to some preferred activities such as listening to music, or watching the Olympics, a football or tennis game.
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