Activation of Human Prefrontal Cortex to Pleasant and Aversive Taste Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the representation of taste in human prefrontal cortex (PFC), in particular, to compare the representation of a pleasant and an aversive taste using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), so as to obtain further understanding of the taste preference mechanism. The pleasant stimulus used was sweet taste (10% sucrose), and the unpleasant stimulus was sour taste (1% critic acid). Based on event-related design, the experiments were performed with 16 healthy volunteers using the OEG-16 fNIRS sensor. A general linear model was used to analyze the collected data. For the concentration change of oxygenated hemoglobin (ΔoxyHb), we found that significant deactivation was induced by sweetness and sourness in parts of the frontopolar area, orbitofrontal area and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in bilateral hemisphere of human brain. And the right PFC showed different levels of activation between sweetness and sourness. In addition, brain activities were more sensitive to sourness than sweetness. Finally, we confirmed that the PFC was involved in sweet and sour taste processing, and fNIRS provided an alternative way for studying taste-related brain function under more natural conditions.

Obesity, Appetite, and the Prefrontal Cortex

“…fNIRS is a recent advancement in neuroimaging and provides topographical assessment of real-time regional cortical hemodynamic changes [92•] which could be useful to investigate brain activation during cognitive tasks such as the Stroop, food Stroop, and go/no-go task. Recent fNIRS studies on eating behavior have reported decreased activation in the DLPFC induced by sweet and sour taste stimuli [93]…”

Right prefrontal activation associated with deviations from expected lipstick texture assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy

“…fNIRS is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique that uses near-infrared light to measure hemodynamic signals reflecting changes in hemoglobin concentrations in the brain. It is well-suited for measuring brain activation during real-world tasks and has been used successfully in previous sensory studies such as taste (Okamoto and Dan, 2007 ; Hu et al, 2014 ), flavor (Okamoto et al, 2006 ; Hasegawa et al, 2013 ), and tactile stimuli (Hong et al, 2017 ).…”

Applying Mobile Consumer Neuroscience for Food Marketing - the Special Case of fNIRS

“…Since the sense of taste perceives both harmful and beneficial things, all basic tastes are classified as either aversive or appetitive depending on their effect on the body. Thus, salty, sweet, and umami are often associated with an intake of essential nutrients, while bitter and sour indicate potentially harmful substances (Hu, Kato, & Luo, 2014). Thus, the emotions evoked by taste are related to food regulation, dietary balance, and harm avoidance.…”