TITLE:
Activation of Human Prefrontal Cortex to Pleasant and Aversive Taste Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
AUTHORS:
Chenghong Hu, Yoshiko Kato, Zhiwei Luo
KEYWORDS:
fNIRS; Gustatory; Sweetness; Sourness; Prefrontal Cortex
JOURNAL NAME:
Food and Nutrition Sciences,
Vol.5 No.2,
January
20,
2014
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.