the.com/glutamate
The brain's loudest cheerleader, also the reason your soup tastes like a hug.
means An amino acid that doubles as the body's main excitatory neurotransmitter and the savory umami flavor in food.
from From gluten (Latin for glue, via wheat protein) plus the chemical suffix -ate; Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda isolated it from kelp in 1908 and named its taste umami.
Brain trafficPowers most excitatory signals between neurons.
MSG truthThe infamous additive is just sodium plus glutamate.
Too muchExcess overexcites neurons, a process called excitotoxicity.