Hunger Improves Our Ability to See Food Words

"Our senses aren't just delivering a strict view of what's going on in the world; they're affected by what's going on in our heads. A new study finds that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who've just eaten. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this change in vision happens at the earliest, perceptual stages, before higher parts of the brain have a chance to change the messages coming from the eyes," according to the post on Medical News Today. "Psychologists have known for decades that what's going on inside our head affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter. Rémi Radel of University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France, wanted to investigate how this happens - whether it's right away, as the brain receives signals from the eyes, or a little later, as the brain's higher-level thinking processes get involved." Read more.