Well into adulthood, my mouth would water whenever I heard a key turning in a lock.<\/p>\n
You may be wondering what on earth happened to me!<\/p>\n
The answer is, nothing particularly odd.<\/p>\n
You see, when I was a child, my mother worked and couldn’t be at home to greet me when I came in from school. I didn’t mind being a ‘latchkey kid’, but to assuage her own guilt about it, she would bring me a chocolate bar. So I would eagerly wait to hear her key turn in the lock, announcing my daily treat.<\/p>\n
In the process, my mother inadvertently ‘trained’ my brain to trigger my salivary glands at the mere sound of metal scraping on metal. The turning key ‘primed’ my expectation of some soon-to-be-gobbled-up chocolate.<\/p>\n