INCREASE OF FOOD INTAKE AS A NEED OF BRAIN OVERSTIMULATION BY ORAL PATHWAYS?

Renato Cocchi, a neurologist and a medical psychologist.

Italian translation

In certain persons some sensorial projection areas of the brain do not bear to be understimulated. The areas of the mouth, and of the thumb, have wider cortical projections, according to the scheme of the sensory homunculus of Rasmussen.

It is easy to stimulate them: it suffices to eat more. In these persons a slimming diet doesn't never work, because it will remove a compensation, as a kind of self-medication not-rationally aware, here too. The same happens for the thumb, and to its substitute, the dummy. The things are still the same, with a double stimulation for the thumb, and a simple one, for the dummy. Anglo-Saxons call it also "the comforter" or "the pacifier" by pointing out its tranquillizer effect.

Two are finally the advantages of the chewing-gum. One is that to give an oral stimulation by chewing. The second one is contemporarily to get some consumption of an excess of peripheral acetylcholine in the masticator muscles. Effects of this excess are well visible in some persons as fasciculations of the masseter muscles.

 Posted on internet on 21 of January 2007. Copyright by Renato Cocchi, 2007.

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