What to do before you take decision!

Jesusegun Alagbe
If you want to take a decision that you
won’t regret taking thereafter, never do so
on an empty stomach.
This is the recommendation of researchers
at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of
Gothenburg, Sweden, who have discovered
a hormone that interferes with decision-
making when hungry.
In their study published in the
Neuropsychopharmacology journal, the
researchers — Karolina Skibicka, Rozita
Anderberg, Caroline Hansson, Maya
Fenander, Jennifer Richard, Suzanne
Dickson, Hans Nissbrazndt and Filip
Bergquist — found out that the stomach
produces a hormone called ghrelin when a
person is hungry.
According to them, ghrelin, when it is
produced, acts on the central nervous
system to distort the flow of thoughts in a
person’s brain, thereby affecting rationality
in decision-making.
But once the stomach has become filled,
production of ghrelin ceases. Ghrelin then
readies the body for food and also works
on the cells of the hypothalamus to induce
the feeling of hunger.
The hypothalamus is the portion of the
brain which controls body temperature,
hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleep, and circadian
rhythms, as well as some important
aspects of parenting and attachment
behaviours.
The lead researcher, Prof. Skibicka, says in
the study that the role of ghrelin is not
limited to the hunger response alone, but
has also been implicated in the reward
behaviour associated with drugs, alcohol,
and food intake.
She adds that decisions taken when
ghrelin is in control are often impulsive
and could lead to regrets later.
The researchers, who set out to
investigate ghrelin’s potential role in
impulsive behaviour, conducted their study
on rats.
Rats given the ghrelin hormone acted more
on impulse, they stated in their findings.
The team trained the rats to perform a
variety of tasks that allowed them to
measure impulsive behaviour.
The first, referred to as the “go/no-go”
test, measured the rats’ ability to restrain a
response.
The rats were trained to either press a
lever to get a reward — referred to as a
“go” signal — or they were rewarded for
not pressing a lever — a “no-go” signal.
The rats were taught to either “go,” or “no-
go,” depending on an auditory signal (a
light or buzzer).
A second trial, called the “differential
reinforcement of low rate,” provided the
rats with a food pellet reward only if they
were able to withhold their response for a
set period of time.
The third trial, called “delay discount,”
measured the rats’ ability to delay
gratification.
At the third trial, the rats were presented
with two levers, one of which would
dispense one food pellet as soon as it was
pressed, while the other would dispense
four food pellets, but only after a
significant delay.
If the first lever was pressed, the second
was blocked. In this way, the rats were
taught to reject their initial impulse in
order to receive the maximum reward later
on.
During the experiment, ghrelin was injected
directly into the rats’ brains, replicating
how the hormone would normally behave
when the animals were hungry.
As expected, the injection made the rats
unable to resist pressing the lever in all
three trials. In other words, impulsivity had
increased.
In fact, in the “go/no-go” trial, the rats
were almost three times more likely to
press the lever during a “no-go” period
when their brains were infused with
ghrelin.
Further to this, the researchers found out
that just a short period of fasting gave the
same impulsive results in the rats.
Skibicka and her team managed to pinpoint
the area of the brain that appears to be
involved in this impulsive behaviour.
“Our results showed that restricting ghrelin
effects to the ventral tegmental area — the
part of the brain that is a crucial
component of the reward system — was
sufficient to make the rats more impulsive.
Importantly, when we blocked ghrelin, the
impulsive behaviour was greatly reduced,”
she said.
According to the
Neuropsychopharmacology journal, the
findings are the first to demonstrate that
ghrelin increases impulsivity in rats.
Hence, the researchers hope that the
findings might assist in the development of
new psychoactive drugs — chemical
substances which change a person’s brain
function and result in alterations in
perception, mood or consciousness.
Meanwhile, ghrelin antagonists, i.e. drugs
that block ghrelin, are already being
studied for their potential use as anti-
obesity medications and to help manage
drug intake in addicts.
As researchers uncover more details about
the actions of the ghrelin hormone, other
therapeutic avenues look sure to open up,
the study stated.
Skibicka says she hopes that eventually,
the brain’s ghrelin receptors could be a
target for the “treatment of psychiatric
disorders that are characterised by
problems with impulsivity.”
Likewise, in their 2010 publication,
“Extraneous factors in judicial decisions,”
authors Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav and
Liora Avnaim-Pessoa from the Columbia
University, New York said that judges who
are hungry are those who usually make
the hasty, harsher judgements.
They cited the example of a renowned
judge in the United States, Joseph Wapner,
presided over 2,484 cases in 12 years,
which is roughly a case per day assuming
there are 200 working days in a year.
According to the publication, Wapner would
listen to one case, ask a few questions,
watch the litigants rant, and then issue his
decision. Then, he’d go off to golf or make
jokes about wigs and long robes, or
whatever it is that judges do in their spare
time.
“For most judges, though, it’s not that
easy. They sit and watch case after case
after case. Probably at about 3:00pm, they
start getting hunger pangs and watching
the clock,” the study says, adding,
“Judgements get harsher when judges get
hungrier.”
In a similar 2010 study titled, “Metabolic
state alters economic decision-making in
humans,” some researchers also found out
that the hungrier people are, the more
risky decisions they are willing to take with
money.
According to the researchers, “Men used in
the study who were purposefully starved
made riskier choices about a financial
gamble, whereas well-fed subjects made
much less riskier choices.”
A lawyer and social commentator in Lagos,
Bisoye Odubona, opines that “if you look at
those who gamble, you will discover they
are the poor people. The little money they
have, they still use it to gamble.”
In Nigeria, where over 100 million people
are living below the poverty line, according
to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, “you
should expect millions of Nigerians to be
making bad decisions every day,” noted
Odubona.
Commenting on the study, a Lagos-based
nutritionist, Mrs. Funmilayo Adegoke, said
because mental activities like thinking and
reading require energy, hunger alters
information processing by the brain.
She said, “The study is simply logical. You
cannot expect a person who is hungry to
reason well. That’s why as a mother and
nutritionist, I always tell my children and
other people to eat before doing any
mental task like reading and thinking.
“Personally too, I cannot assimilate
anything if I’m reading or thinking on an
empty stomach. I think you can only worry
if you’re hungry. You won’t be able to think
and take decisions. If I’m fasting, I don’t
read. I relax.
“Reading and thinking require a lot of
energy, many people perhaps don’t know.
We need food to survive and be
productive.”
Odubona’s and Adegoke’s recommendation
next time you are probably going to take a
decision: eat, think, then decide.