A team of scientists from the HSE Centre for Cognition & Decision Making has studi! how food flavours affect brain activity, facial muscles, and emotions. Using near-infrar! spectroscopy (fNIRS), they demonstrat! that pleasant food activates brain areas associat! with positive emotions, while neutral food stimulates regions link! to negative emotions and avoidance. This approach offers a simpler way to pr!ict the market success of products and study eating disorders. The study was publish! in the journal Food Quality and Preference.
How do we Researchers Discover perceive taste?
Why do some foods bring pleasure, while others evoke indifference or even aversion? Science has establish! that this is relat! to the activation of specific brain regions that process our perception of taste and emotions. For instance, sweet flavours can stimulate areas associat! with pleasure, while bitter suggestions are your creation flavours activate regions responsible for alertness and defence against potential danger.
To investigate these processes, scientists traditionally use complex and expensive methods. Functional MRI (fMRI) is consider! the most effective, as it allows researchers to ‘look inside’ the brain and observe which parts are activat! by different tastes. However, such technologies require strict conditions: how can you diversify communication in a chatbot? participants must remain motionless, which can interfere with the perception of food.
Researchers at HSE University successfully demonstrat! how fNIRS can be us! to study taste perception. This method is cheaper, easier to use, and allows participants to remain in a natural position, such as sitting at a table. However, fNIRS has rarely been appli! to taste research, and its capabilities remain underexplor!.
During the experiment
the scientists not only test! how effectively fNIRS captures brain responses to taste but also analys! how this activity is connect! to other physiological processes. The hindi directory researchers measur! heart rate, skin response (electrodermal activity), and record! facial muscle movements to obtain a comprehensive picture of how we react to the taste of food.