So I finally broke open my copy of Best Food Writing 2006, and came across a great article The Egg Men, by Burkhard Bilger (from The New Yorker). This segment absolutely fascinated me, and I thought you might find it interesting as well:
Whenever a cook sets a pan on a griddle, Meck says, a burst of dopamine is released in the brain’s frontal cortex. The cortex is full of oscillatory neurons that vibrate at different tempos. The dopamine forces a group of these neurons to fall into synch, which sends a chemical signal to the corpus striatum, at the base of the brain. "We call that the start gun," Meck says.
Andrew Baber is a