( o what we like or don't like he says....)Tastes great! Study shows brain's response to pleasing -- and changing -- tastes

But research on how these neurons fire to signal pleasure is important for more than just curiosity's sake, he adds. The ventral pallidum is an important brain region for both pleasure and craving. If firing patterns go wrong in ventral pallidum, it could possibly contribute to eating disorders, anorexia and drug addiction.

Eventually, activation in the ventral pallidum in response to pleasurable tastes could also be useful in brain-mapping techniques in humans. All in all, Aldridge says, the new paper is "a really good example of how animal experiments help us understand the human brain. If we can understand how the brain generates normal pleasures, we may have a new focus for effective treatments in people who don't experience normal pleasure."