Pictures of appetizing foods activate gustatory cortices for taste and reward
Abstract
Increasing research indicates that concepts are represented as distributed circuits of property information across the brain's modality-specific areas. The current study examines the distributed representation of an important but under-explored category, foods. Participants viewed pictures of appetizing foods (along with pictures of locations for comparison) during event-related fMRI. Compared to location pictures, food pictures activated the right insula/operculum and the left orbitofrontal cortex, both gustatory processing areas. Food pictures also activated regions of visual cortex that represent object shape. Together these areas contribute to a distributed neural circuit that represents food knowledge. Not only does this circuit become active during the tasting of actual foods, it also becomes active while viewing food pictures. Via the process of pattern completion, food pictures activate gustatory regions of the circuit to produce conceptual inferences about taste. Consistent with theories that ground knowledge in the modalities, these inferences arise as reenactments of modality-specific processing.
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Visual inputs associated with food converge with olfactory and taste information in the OFC.
“there is evidence to suggest that visual inputs associated with food also converge with olfactory and taste information in the OFC [152-154]”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [153]
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- Authors
- Simmons, W. K., Martin, A., & Barsalou, L. W.
- Affiliations
- Emory University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Simmons, W. Kyle
- Venue
- Cerebral Cortex
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2005-02-09
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1602-1608
- ISSN
- 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2199
- OpenAlex
- W2166693783
- Cited by
- 569
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 40 · 2015: 36 · 2014: 40 · 2013: 32 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 7.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5f31mh070152-02)
- National Institute of Mental Health (1F31MH070152-01)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Sensory Systems › Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- food images, gustatory cortex, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, distributed representations, food knowledge, pattern completion, modality-specific processing, visual cortex, reward, conceptual grounding
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Appetite, Cerebral Cortex, Cues, Female, Food, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Photic Stimulation, Reward, Taste, Visual Cortex
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