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A recent study published in an online journal, Hippocampus, reveals that the part of brain that forms episodic memories, also known as the dorsal hippocampus, get activated as soon as one eats sweets. Episodic memory is defined as the autobiographical event that one experiences in certain place and at a certain time. According to this study, when a meal has been laced with a sweetened component that consists of either sucrose or saccharin increases the activation of activity-regulated-cytoskeleton associated protein (Arc) in the episodic memory part of the brain in lab rats. Synaptic memory that is the core of episodic memory is what leads to memorable events that one associates with a time and/or place. Marise Parent of Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State said, "We think that episodic memory can be used to control eating behavior. We make decisions like 'I probably won't eat now. I had a big breakfast.' We make decisions based on our memory of what and when we ate", reports Science Daily.

The studies so far show that the snacking is an activity that can be correlated with the obesity and unhealthy munching. People that are struggling with weight issues are known to have much higher propensity to snack frequently than the ones who are not obese. Research also shows that over the years, the adults and children are deriving most of their calories from snacking on sweetened foods in the form of desserts and beverages, reveals Science Daily.

Marise Parent said that for the scientists to accurately understand the regulation of energy that causes obesity, they need to study how the brain controls frequency of meals. In the future, the teams will work on determining if the nutritionally balanced liquid or solid diets that are protein, fat and carbohydrate rich will have the similar effect on the hippocampal neurons and whether the related arc expression is critical to sweet food memories, says Medical Express.