Dear Paleolist members:
The following is based of my knowing (which may be incomplete) of brain physiology. 
When I state that I don't understand something based on it, it doesn't imply in any way that it's wrong; only that if it's right, I don't know how to explain it.


Dear Jean-Claude,

thank you for this very informative post.
I'm trying to understand the physiological basis behind the "anapsology" concept you wrote about.

What do our brains have to deal with here?
(1) Smelling, (2) tasting, (3) choosing to eat or not to eat a particular food based on the preceding sensations, and (4) knowing when we've had enough of it.

    a.. The relation between 1, 2 and 3:

As far as the importance of tasting and smelling in the choosing of food are concerned, the archipallium (a part of the telencephalic brain, the "big thing" in our heads) is the boss. 
-The rhinencephalic brain is the "smelling" structure and is indeed a part of the archipallium (this implies strong connections with other parts of the archipallium).
-Also, there are parts of this same archipallium that are dedicated to instinct: In fact, the archipallium is the main instinct structure.

So, I can see your point clearly here, particularly the smelling-choosing link, which could seem strange at first. Well, it's not!

On to what I don't understand:

    a.. The assumed direct activity of the archipallium in (3):

There's a major difference between Humans and horses, or between Humans and any other species for that matter:
Humans are the only species in which the archipallium is completely "overwhelmed" by the much bigger neopallium ( the center of our non-instinctive behavior, of our individuality, and, therefore, of our acquired tastes for some foods or for others). 
In a word, in Humans, instinct doesn't have the right to say a thing when individuality has spoken, and this last one surely speaks a lot when our brain addresses issues related to cultural and individual matters (such is food). 
Science seems to say "You're human, so for topics related to culture you can't know what your instinct is, since you've been educated ".

    a.. The relation between 1, 2, 3 on one side and 4 on the other: 

The center that says when we've had enough of a certain food or when we have eaten enough altogether is well-known: It's the hypothalamus (a diencephalic structure). 
As a whole, It has some links to the brains we talked about earlier, BUT, as far as regulation of food is concerned, the nervous informations that reach it come from "below" (digetive tract nerves) AND, it's only concerned with the nutrients, not with the types of food eaten: 
For instance, your hypothalamus doesn't know wether you ate a low-carb cheese or a high fat cut of meat (nutrients resulting from digestion don't differ much in this case: amino-acids in well balanced proportions and saturated fats). That's what your hypothalamus is concerned with when it tells you wether to stop eating or to continue.
(Of course, that doesn't mean that these 2 foods are "equal": according to our paleotheory, the first should trigger an immune response, but that's another story).

This makes it hard to understand how eating raw and "paleoapproved" foods would regulate food intake differently (the same resulting nutrients in the same proportions being given).

Any scientific explanation would be greatly appreciated concerning this whole post, as well as personal experience comments dealing with the last point.