Great show, guys.

Two thoughts. We like Cheetos because we are still carrying around food-seeking equipment that says “Find all the fat, salt, and starch you can. Whe you find these things, eat them.” It made sense when we were hunter-gatherers, and 7-11s were quite a bit more scarce than they are today.

On the idea of feeling being isolated to a single neuron — the research says this *might* be happening; they aren’t sure. But even if it does happen in rats, it almost certainly doesn’t in humans for the reason Stephen stated. We are wired such that everything takes place in the connections. Still, simpler wiring schemes such as rats have can reveal something about what the basic equipment is capable of, even if we don’t use it that way. (It’s like figuring out how to send telephone signals over the electric power grid — you might not ever DO it, but thinking about doing it might teach you something either about the electric grid or the telephone signal, or both.)