Sex, smell and appetite

From San Francisco, at a meeting of the Endocrine Society

Does the smell of movie-theater popcorn send you dashing for a supersize bucket? Oddly enough, a study of sexual dysfunction in mutated mice may help explain such connections between smell and appetite.

The mice are genetically engineered to lack melanin-concentrating hormone, or MCH, which is made in the brain and is known to stimulate feeding.