: Beef M. longissimus thoracis et lumborum was used to investigate the effects of 6 end‐point temperatures on flavor and texture. Steaks cooked to medium temperature were associated with 4‐heptanolide, whereas those cooked to higher temperatures were associated with pyrazines and hexanol. These steaks were also associated with flavor attributes, such as roasted, burnt, and beefy. However, consumers did not find differences in flavor liking of steaks (P > 0.05) cooked to 6 end‐point temperatures. Although steaks cooked to lower temperatures were liked for their tenderness and juiciness, overall liking scores were not affected by end‐point temperature. Thus both flavor and tenderness play an important role in consumer satisfaction.

One function of spatial attention is to enable goal-directed interactions with the environment through the allocation of neural resources to motivationally relevant parts of space. Studies have shown that responses are enhanced when spatial attention is predictively biased towards locations where significant events are expected to occur. Previous studies suggest that the ability to bias attention predictively is related to posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activation (Small et al., 2003). Sleep deprivation (SD) impairs selective attention and reduces PCC activity (Thomas et al., 2000). Based on these findings, we hypothesized that SD would affect PCC function and alter the ability to predictively allocate spatial attention. Seven healthy, young adults underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) following normal rest and 34-36 hours of SD while performing a task in which attention was shifted in response to peripheral targets preceded by spatially informative (valid), misleading (invalid), or uninformative (neutral) cues. When rested, but not when sleep-deprived, subjects responded more quickly to targets that followed valid cues than those after neutral or invalid cues. Brain activity during validly cued trials with a reaction time benefit was compared to activity in trials with no benefit. PCC activation was greater during trials with a reaction time benefit following normal rest. In contrast, following SD, reaction time benefits were associated with activation in the left intraparietal sulcus, a region associated with receptivity to stimuli at unexpected locations. These changes may render sleep-deprived individuals less able to anticipate the locations of upcoming events, and more susceptible to distraction by stimuli at irrelevant locations.