Cognitive Modulation of Olfactory Processing

Araújo, Ivan E. de; Rolls, Edmund T.; Velazco, Maria Inés; Margot, Christian; Cayeux, Isabelle

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2005.04.021

Cited by 470 publications

(369 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…As an example, isovaleric acid has a pungent odor that people like if they are told it is from cheddar cheese and dislike if they are told it is from body odor. 160 Likewise, people will eat food with a bad smell (e.g., durians or limburger cheese) if they know it is safe and they like the taste. In addition, the pleasant odor of food can stimulate appetite, but the potency of these genetic differences in determining food intake and obesity is unclear.…”

Section: Smellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics of Taste and Smell

Reed

Knaapila

2010

Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science

211

116

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Eating is dangerous. While food contains nutrients and calories that animals need to produce heat and energy, it may also contain harmful parasites, bacteria, or chemicals. To guide food selection, the senses of taste and smell have evolved to alert us to the bitter taste of poisons and the sour taste and off-putting smell of spoiled foods. These sensory systems help people and animals to eat defensively, and they provide the brake that helps them avoid ingesting foods that are harmful. But choices about which foods to eat are motivated by more than avoiding the bad; they are also motivated by seeking the good, such as fat and sugar. However, just as not everyone is equally capable of sensing toxins in food, not everyone is equally enthusiastic about consuming high-fat, high-sugar foods. Genetic studies in humans and experimental animals strongly suggest that the liking of sugar and fat is influenced by genotype; likewise, the abilities to detect bitterness and the malodors of rotting food are highly variable among individuals. Understanding the exact genes and genetic differences that affect food intake may provide important clues in obesity treatment by allowing caregivers to tailor dietary recommendations to the chemosensory landscape of each person.

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Section: Smellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics of Taste and Smell

Reed

Knaapila

2010

Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science

211

116

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“…preconceptions about the nature of a particular food or odour, can reach down into the olfactory system in the orbitofrontal cortex, which controls the palatability of food, to influence the pleasantness rating of an olfactory stimulus (de Araujo et al 2005). This process may have potential for controlling food intake and needs further investigation.…”

Section: Cognitive Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory processing in the brain related to the control of food intake

2007

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Complementary neurophysiological recordings in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and functional neuroimaging in human subjects show that the primary taste cortex in the rostral insula and adjoining frontal operculum provides separate and combined representations of the taste, temperature and texture (including viscosity and fat texture) of food in the mouth independently of hunger and thus of reward value and pleasantness. One synapse on, in the orbitofrontal cortex, these sensory inputs are for some neurons combined by learning with olfactory and visual inputs. Different neurons respond to different combinations, providing a rich representation of the sensory properties of food. In the orbitofrontal cortex feeding to satiety with one food decreases the responses of these neurons to that food, but not to other foods, showing that sensory-specific satiety is computed in the primate (including the human) orbitofrontal cortex. Consistently, activation of parts of the human orbitofrontal cortex correlates with subjective ratings of the pleasantness of the taste and smell of food. Cognitive factors, such as a word label presented with an odour, influence the pleasantness of the odour, and the activation produced by the odour in the orbitofrontal cortex. Food intake is thus controlled by building a multimodal representation of the sensory properties of food in the orbitofrontal cortex and gating this representation by satiety signals to produce a representation of the pleasantness or reward value of food that drives food intake. Factors that lead this system to become unbalanced and contribute to overeating and obesity are described.Sensory-specific satiety: Fat: Food texture: Taste: OlfactionThe aims of the present paper are to describe the rules of the cortical processing of taste and smell, how the pleasantness or affective value of taste and smell are represented in the brain, and to relate this information to the brain mechanisms underlying the control of appetite, food intake and obesity. To make the results relevant to understanding the control of human food intake, complementary evidence is provided by neurophysiological studies in non-human primates and by functional neuroimaging studies in human subjects. A broad perspective on brain processing involved in emotion and in hedonic aspects of the control of food intake is provided by Rolls (2005a). Taste processing in the primate brain PathwaysA diagram of the taste and related olfactory, somatosensory and visual pathways in primates is shown in Fig. 1. The multimodal convergence that enables single neurons to respond to different combinations of taste, olfactory, Abbreviation: fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging.

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“…Thus OI can be regarded as a semantic naming task. However, it has been shown that semantic information about the presented odors influences brain activity (de Araujo et al 2005). To avoid semantic effects influencing the results, OI was performed unaided by visual or auditory clues in the present study.…”

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confidence: 99%