Someone who greatly enjoys sweet foods is said to have a "sweet tooth." Experimental evidence now shows us that eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits. In other words, people may enjoy eating sweets because the taste is correlated with positive memories.
The findings, published online in the journal Hippocampus, show that neurons in the dorsal
hippocampus, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.
In the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker called activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) in dorsal hippocampal neurons in rats. Synaptic plasticity is a process that is necessary for making memories.
More of this study can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hipo.22532/abstract;jsessionid=713B1994FF1BDE45C642EE2418FB6046.f02t04
