HERE’S food for thought: a hormone that triggers hunger might also improve learning and memory. Ghrelin is released by the stomach when it is empty and triggers hunger by binding to the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that controls appetite and metabolism. However, the hormone is also known to interact with the hippocampus, the seat of learning and memory.
Tamas Horvath of Yale Medical School and his colleagues injected mice with extra ghrelin and found that they consistently outperformed ordinary mice in standard laboratory tests for memory and learning. “Ghrelin improved the animals’ performance by 30 to 40 per…
