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Hunger
lppc~rirr~. 19x7. 8. 237
Book
Review
Hunger, Jacques Le Magnen. Pp. 157. Cambridge f20+N/$34.50, Hardcover; &7.95/$14.95, Paperback.
University
Press, Cambridge.
1985
This is one of the rare books on hunger and body weight regulation written by one single author, and the outcome is far more exciting and stimulating than the typical edited collection of contributions from different experts. Le Magnen tells us what he thinks. He gives us his view and is not trying to satisfy everybody. Of course he is one of the few in the field that can do this, having contributed in a creative fashion to almost every aspect of the field for over 30 years. The first two-thirds of the book deals with behavioral and metabolic facts, followed by two chapters on neural mechanisms. The first chapter is a rather unusual list of experimental techniques and procedures. It emphasizes the importance given to them by Le Magnen. Let us not forget that his method of automatically and continuously recording food intake in rats allowed him to discover the now famous observation that meal size is correlated with the latency to eat the next meal but not with the interval since the previous meal under free-feeding conditions. According to Le Magnen the three major elements that are at work in food intake and body weight control are: (1) The systemic and sensory stimulation to eat or, in other words, hunger, arousal and meal initiation. (2) Determinants of meal size or satiation-mechanisms. (31 Mechanisms that maintain fat mass and energy balance. These three basic mechanisms are first discussed exclusively in behavioral and metabolic terms. There is much to be learned by simply analyzing behavior and parallel metabolic parameters first. This thorough analysis of meal size, meal intervals, plasma concentrations of energy metabolites, diurnal rhythms etc. and their experimental manipulation then allowed Le Magnen to formulate a surprisingly simple hypothesis about the neural mechanisms involved. Even though this view is still heavily rooted in the classical hypothalamic feeding areas, (in spite of the below-the-hypothalamus revolution that started several years ago), it is clearly a large step forward from the primitive satiety-center hypothesis that unfortunately kept us busy much too long. Surely the final word about how the brain controls feeding and body weight is not spoken, and it would be silly to replace one potentially misleading myth of the hypothalamus by another, but Le Magnen’s views are so useful and stimulating because they are based on the above mentioned thorough behavioral metabolic analysis. It is not that Le Magnen is hopelessly biased towards peripheral metabolic phenomena in favor of brain function, but he makes us realize that constructs like appetite, hunger and satiety are useless concepts if simply mapped on neural structures and not given the proper behavioral-metabolic definition. Maybe the aspect of feeding that still fits in least well with such insights is the involvement of learning which is also amply discussed in this book. While most of the theorizing is based on animal (rat) work, Le Magnen includes the relevant human literature. It seems miraculous how all this fits on roughly 150 pages including over 500 references and an index. It makes an excellent one-evening reading. The book should be exciting to read for any research-oriented scientist in the many disciplines of this large field but might be less appropriate as a textbook for students.
0195~6663:87
030237fOl
SO3QOjO
(
1987
Academic
Press
Inc.
(London)
Lmuted
Book
Review
Hunger, Jacques Le Magnen. Pp. 157. Cambridge f20+N/$34.50, Hardcover; &7.95/$14.95, Paperback.
University
Press, Cambridge.
1985
This is one of the rare books on hunger and body weight regulation written by one single author, and the outcome is far more exciting and stimulating than the typical edited collection of contributions from different experts. Le Magnen tells us what he thinks. He gives us his view and is not trying to satisfy everybody. Of course he is one of the few in the field that can do this, having contributed in a creative fashion to almost every aspect of the field for over 30 years. The first two-thirds of the book deals with behavioral and metabolic facts, followed by two chapters on neural mechanisms. The first chapter is a rather unusual list of experimental techniques and procedures. It emphasizes the importance given to them by Le Magnen. Let us not forget that his method of automatically and continuously recording food intake in rats allowed him to discover the now famous observation that meal size is correlated with the latency to eat the next meal but not with the interval since the previous meal under free-feeding conditions. According to Le Magnen the three major elements that are at work in food intake and body weight control are: (1) The systemic and sensory stimulation to eat or, in other words, hunger, arousal and meal initiation. (2) Determinants of meal size or satiation-mechanisms. (31 Mechanisms that maintain fat mass and energy balance. These three basic mechanisms are first discussed exclusively in behavioral and metabolic terms. There is much to be learned by simply analyzing behavior and parallel metabolic parameters first. This thorough analysis of meal size, meal intervals, plasma concentrations of energy metabolites, diurnal rhythms etc. and their experimental manipulation then allowed Le Magnen to formulate a surprisingly simple hypothesis about the neural mechanisms involved. Even though this view is still heavily rooted in the classical hypothalamic feeding areas, (in spite of the below-the-hypothalamus revolution that started several years ago), it is clearly a large step forward from the primitive satiety-center hypothesis that unfortunately kept us busy much too long. Surely the final word about how the brain controls feeding and body weight is not spoken, and it would be silly to replace one potentially misleading myth of the hypothalamus by another, but Le Magnen’s views are so useful and stimulating because they are based on the above mentioned thorough behavioral metabolic analysis. It is not that Le Magnen is hopelessly biased towards peripheral metabolic phenomena in favor of brain function, but he makes us realize that constructs like appetite, hunger and satiety are useless concepts if simply mapped on neural structures and not given the proper behavioral-metabolic definition. Maybe the aspect of feeding that still fits in least well with such insights is the involvement of learning which is also amply discussed in this book. While most of the theorizing is based on animal (rat) work, Le Magnen includes the relevant human literature. It seems miraculous how all this fits on roughly 150 pages including over 500 references and an index. It makes an excellent one-evening reading. The book should be exciting to read for any research-oriented scientist in the many disciplines of this large field but might be less appropriate as a textbook for students.
0195~6663:87
030237fOl
SO3QOjO
(
1987
Academic
Press
Inc.
(London)
Lmuted