How we evaluate our food: Mapping brain regions involved in evaluating calories, taste intensity and pleasantness

Rationale: How our brains respond to a mouthful of food depends on the attention we pay to it’s different characteristics. In fMRI taste research, instructions accompanying a taste are often very unspecific, e.g. ‘taste’, ‘swallow’ or ‘hold the solution in your mouth’, or sometimes absent (crosshair on the screen). This allows participants to focus their attention on various aspects of the food which makes it difficult to pinpoint very precisely what the associated brain activation reflects. In line with this, previous research showed that brain responses were different when selective attention was paid to the pleasantness or to the intensity of a taste.



Objective: The primary objective of this study is to assess how selective attention to different food characteristics (calories, taste intensity and pleasantness) affects brain responses during tasting. Secondary objectives are to assess (1) whether taste activation during selective attention to calories, taste intensity or pleasantness best predicts food intake, (2) to assess whether taste activation during selective attention is the same for different taste qualities and (3) to assess whether taste activation during selective attention is modulated by personality characteristics.



Study design: On the study day participants engage in a taste fMRI task in which they are instructed to alternately pay attention to the calories (C), taste intensity (T) and pleasantness (P) of a savory, a sweet and a neutral drink. At the end of the session (outside the scanner) participants will be asked to consume as much as they want from the sweet drink (ad libitum).



Study population: The study population consists of 26 apparently healthy, right-handed, normal weight (BMI 18.5-25 kg/m2), women between the age of 18 and 35 y.

We expect to find differences in taste related brain regions, i.e. the primary and secondary taste cortex (AIFO and OFC) and brain regions involved in reward and energy processing, such as the striatum, amygdala and cingulate cortex.

1. brain activation during tasting is obtained during one fMRI scan

2. Ad libitum intake is measured after the fMRI scan

Participants are instructed to pay attention to either the calories, taste intensity or pleasantness of a sweet, a savory and
a neutral stimulus and accordingly taste these stimuli.