A few years ago, Lowell—a Harvard University neuroscientist—and a postdoc, Mike Krashes, figured out how to turn up the volume on the drive for food as high as it can go. They did it by stimulating a bundle of neurons in the hypothalamus, an area of the brain thought to play a key role in regulating our basic needs.
A video captures what happened next. Initially, the scene is calm as a camera pans slowly along a series of plastic cages, each occupied by a docile, well-fed mouse, reclining on a bed of wood chips. None of the eight mice shown are interested in the food pellets arrayed above them on the other side of a triangular metal grate that drops down from the ceiling. Which is not surprising, since each mouse has just consumed the rodent equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner.