Eating the junk food: its in the brain: Tuesday 5th May 2009: HCFI: When it comes to eating junk food one may blame the brain said Dr KK Aggarwal President Heart Care Foundation of India and Director IMAAKN Sinha Institute. Addiction is a disease and the same has been proved by a new study. Two areas of the brain has to work together to give the self-control to reject unhealthy foods. California Institute of Technology researchers used MRI to scan the brains of volunteers as they looked at photos of dozens of types of foods and decided which ones they'd like to eat. They found significant differences in the brain activity between people who had self-control in terms of making food choices and those with no self-control. An area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is involved in all value-based decisions. When ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity decreases, a person will probably reject an item, whereas increased activity means they'll probably choose it. The study published in May 1 issue of Science found that in people with no self-control, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex seemed to take into consideration only the taste of a food. In people with good self-control another area of the brain called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex becomes active and modulates the basic value signals so that the self-controllers also incorporate health considerations into their decisions. The study showed that ventromedial prefrontal cortex is active during every decision and that the DLPFC is more active when a person is using self-control.