One activity may engage your brain more than any other

Your brain fires for every reason imaginable walking, talking, remembering what you went into that room for, even doing nothing at all.But neuroscientists think one activity might activate your brain more than any other, and you do it every day: eating!Dr. Gordon Shepherd, a neuroscientist at Yale, coined the term "neurogastronomy" in 2006 to describe how the brain creates flavors that make eating food pleasurable.He told Tech Insider that creating flavor is one of the most complex tasks the brain does."Flavor engages more of the brain in relation to how it determines what we eat than almost any other behavior. If you think about swinging a tennis racket, or writing a paper, or even using a tool, it's a pretty focused use of the brain," he said. "But in the case of flavor ... you're engaging not only all of the sensory systems in the brain (vision, taste, smell, and even hearing) ... [but also]emotion, memory, language in describing to ourselves and to others the flavor, the motivations to eat. It's virtually the entire brain."Music is another activity that neuroscientists have discovered triggers a wave of brain activity. It's interesting to see that some of the most enjoyable human activities can activateour brains in such a complex way.Neurogastronomy is a new area of research, so scientists have a lot more to understand about how food and flavor affect our brains.But the field could possibly allow us to trick our brains into eating healthier or more sustainably grown foods one day. Understanding what flavor does to our brains is just one of the steps to unlocking that potential.Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: A restaurant in Barcelona makes dishes that look like other foods
Click here to read full news..