A role for prefrontal cortex has been proposed in systems consolidation of memory. The current study examined the effects of excitotoxic lesions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in rats on acquisition and remote recall of socially transmitted food preferences (STFP). Subjects received excitotoxic lesions of the OFC, and they were ...

The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between the odorants in the model drink and the odorants reaching the olfactory epithelium using the Retronasal Flavor Impression Screening System (R-FISS). By application of the R-FISS to the odorants in the model drink, it was found that a methylthio ...

The ontogenesis of olfactogustatory preferences has been investigated in various mammals but surprisingly not in domestic cats Felis catus. In a first experiment, we examined how prenatal exposure (25 days prepartum) to a cheese flavor via the mother's diet can influence olfactory preferences of neonatal kittens. During 2-choice tests, 2-day-old ...

The Hadza are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. Their diet can be conveniently categorized into five main categories: tubers, berries, meat, baobab, and honey. We showed the Hadza photos of these foods and asked them to rank them in order of preference. Honey was ranked the highest. Tubers, as expected from their ...

The hormone, pancreatic polypeptide (PP) is postulated to be involved in body weight regulation. PP release is dependent on vagal activation and is a marker of vagal efferent activity. Because vagal activity plays a role in glucose homeostasis, elucidating the conditions of activation has important implications for nutrient metabolism. In ...

There is a well-documented disruption of the neural network associated with reward evaluation in schizophrenia. This same system is involved in coding the incentive value of food in healthy individuals, but few studies to date have examined anhedonia and its relation to food hedonicity and preference in schizophrenia. Relative preference ...

Using data from two conditions of an experiment that arranged response-contingent foods and red keylight illuminations, we compared time-indexed and response-indexed preference pulses. The interpretation of red keylight effects (relative to food effects) differed according to whether time or behaviour was used to index choice in the post-event period: preference ...

Animals commonly use feature and spatial strategies when remembering places of interest such as food sources or hiding places. We conducted three experiments with great apes to investigate strategy preferences and factors that may shape them. In the first experiment, we trained 17 apes to remember 12 different food locations ...

The odor-active compounds of cardboard were identified by aroma extract dilution analysis and HRGC-MS analysis. In total, 36 compounds were detected with medium to high intensities during HRGC-olfactometry. The highest odor intensities were evaluated for vanillin, (E)-non-2-enal, (R/S)-gamma-nonalactone, 2-methoxyphenol, (R/S)-delta-decalactone, p-anisaldehyde, 3-propylphenol, and a woody-smelling unknown compound. Most of the ...

Many physiological and behavioral changes take place during pregnancy, including changes in taste and an increase in food intake. These changes are necessary to ensure growth and development of a healthy fetus. Both hyperphagia and taste changes during pregnancy may be induced by sex hormones estrogen and progesterone that are ...

BACKGROUND: Elderly people may benefit from sensory stimulation to increase food intake since anorexia of ageing is prevalent among them. An optimal MSG concentration may increase the palatability of foods but this depends on the food and chemosensory status of the taster. Currently, the results on taste enhancing to increase ...

Mice can learn a food preference from odor cues transmitted on the breath of a conspecific, even if the "demonstrator" is anesthetized. To our knowledge there are no studies examining the effect of anesthetizing the "observer" on development of memory for socially transmitted food preferences (STFP). In Experiment 1 we ...

The sense of taste is a specialized chemosensory system dedicated to the evaluation of food and drink. Despite the fact that vertebrates and insects have independently evolved distinct anatomic and molecular pathways for taste sensation, there are clear parallels in the organization and coding logic between the two systems. There ...

This study explores the effects of exposure to pictures of fruits and vegetables on young children's willingness to taste the foods. The parents of 20 toddlers aged 21-24 months were asked to read a picture book about four foods with their child every day for two weeks. In a subsequent ...

The characteristic flavors, with the exception of umami, of dried bonito stock not only enhanced saltiness but also improved palatability, namely the acceptability, of salt-reduced foods. However, the respective effects of odorants and tastants of dried bonito stock on palatability have yet to be fully explained. Thus, the effect of ...

The palatability and pleasantness of the sensory properties of foods drive food selection and intake and may contribute to overeating and obesity. Oral fat texture can make food palatable and pleasant. To analyze its neural basis, we correlated humans' subjective reports of the pleasantness of the texture and flavor of ...

Dietary behaviour can modify the risks for coronary heart disease (CHD). Dietary fat contributes to the sensory characteristics of many foods, but there are individual differences in liking for regular and reduced fat products. Preference for dietary fat might differ between healthy individuals and those of diagnosed CHD status. Preference ...

Our evaluation of food is influenced by a variety of contextual information perceived via the senses. Here we investigated whether there are interactions between auditory stimuli and basic tastes (indicated by the names of typically sour and bitter foods). Participants took part in a version of the Implicit Association Test ...

This review explores the relation between evolution, ecology, and culture in determining human food preferences. The basic physiology and morphology of Homo sapiens sets boundaries to our eating habits, but within these boundaries human food preferences are remarkably varied, both within and between populations. This does not mean that variation ...

The accurate quantification of sensory difference/similarity between foods, as well as consumer acceptance/preference and concepts, is greatly needed to optimize and maintain food quality. The R-Index is one class of measures of the degree of difference/similarity, and was originally developed for sensory difference tests for food quality control, product development, ...

The act of eating and drinking brings food-related chemicals into contact with taste cells. Activation of these taste cells, in turn, engages neural circuits in the central nervous system that help animals identify foods and fluids, determine what and how much to eat, and prepare the body for digestion and ...

Repeated pairings of novel food-related odours with sweet tastes can result in enduring changes in sweetness of the odour alone, but have less consistent effects on odour liking. Variation in ability to taste propylthiouracil (PROP) might account for this, since PROP supertasters (ST) have been reported both to experience stronger ...

In 1908 Kikunae Ikeda identified the unique taste component of konbu (kelp) as the salt of glutamic acid and coined the term umami to describe this taste. After Ikeda's discovery, other umami taste substances, such as inosinate and guanylate, were identified. Over the past several decades, the properties of these ...

An important route through which food (dis)likes can be acquired is Evaluative Conditioning (EC). A simple and convenient EC procedure for studying food (dis)likes was described by Verhulst et al. [Verhulst, F., Hermans, D., Baeyens, F., Spruyt, A., & Eelen, P. (2006). Determinants and predictive validity of direct and indirect ...

The more consistently someone records their food intake the more likely they are to lose weight. We hypothesized that subjects who kept track via their preferred method would demonstrate higher adherence and therefore improved outcomes compared to those who used a non-preferred method. Participants were randomly assigned to use a ...

We identified a model system that exploits the inherent taste variation in early feedings to investigate food preference development. The objective was to determine whether exposure to differing concentrations of taste compounds in milk and formulas modifies acceptance of exemplars of the 5 basic taste qualities in a familiar food ...

OBJECTIVE: Dialysis patients frequently report a change of taste that is reversible after renal transplantation, suggesting that uremic toxins may negatively influence taste. Currently, frequent nocturnal home hemodialysis (NHHD) is the most effective method of hemodialysis, and is associated with the lowest levels of uremic toxins. We studied preferences for ...

Estrogen receptor activation has been shown to reduce body weight and produce a conditioned reduction in food intake in male rats that is putatively mediated by estradiol's suggested aversive effects. Evidence has shown that the selective estrogen receptor modulator tamoxifen used in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer may ...

The ability to taste bitter thiourea compounds and related chemicals is a well-known human trait. The majority of individuals perceive these compounds, typified by the bitterness of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) and phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), as moderately-to-extremely bitter. Approximately 30% of the population is taste blind to these substances. It has been hypothesized ...

Perceptions of food vary as a function of an individual's genetic factors, such as the set of alleles coding for their taste, irritation, and olfaction receptor proteins. We established a direct link between individual differences in sensitivity to the glucosinolates, a family of bitter compounds in vegetables and roots, and ...

In order to decode genetic variations affecting food choice and to determine whether to accept or to reject certain food products, it is a necessary prerequisite to deorphanize the hTAS2R/ligand pairs using the key bitter compounds in foods as stimuli rather than doing this either by using artificial molcules, to ...

In the 1960s, Betsy Bang unraveled the complexity of the olfactory apparatus of procellariiform seabirds (petrels and albatrosses), suggesting an important role for olfaction in their ecology. Shortly thereafter, Prof. B. Wenzel continued the investigations on petrels' well-developed olfactory neuroanatomy as well as their sensitivity to food-related scents. Later studies ...

Taste is a major determinant of children's food preferences, but its development is incompletely known. Thus, exploring infants' acceptance of basic tastes is necessary. The first objective was to evaluate the acceptance of tastes and their developmental changes over the first year. The second objective was to compare acceptance across ...

The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether olfactory detection thresholds are dependent on different states of satiety. Using the threshold test of the Sniffin' Sticks test battery (single-staircase, three alternative forced choice procedure), sensitivity to a non-food odour (n-butanol) and a food-related odour (isoamyl acetate) was investigated. ...

How does a person's first experience with a foreign or unfamiliar food shape their long-term preference and behavior toward that food? To investigate this, 493 American veterans of World War II were surveyed about their preference for Japanese and Chinese food. Pacific veterans who experienced high levels of combat had ...

There is a controversy concerning whether smelling via the nose (ortho-nasally) or the mouth (retro-nasally) represent two routes to the same modality or two distinct submodalities. Since olfactory coding is dependent upon experience, and since food odors are experienced retro-nasally, the authors tested the hypothesis that whether an odor represents ...

The relationship between laboratory and field ratings was investigated for six different appetizers, including four ready-to-reconstitute mixes and two ready-to-eat munches. Liking ratings on a 5-point hedonic scale were obtained from an Indian Army field study at base level as well as at an altitude of 11,500 ft above sea ...

In three experiments, four chimpanzees made choices between two visible food options to assess the validity of the selective value effect (the assignment of value to only the most preferred type of food presented in a comparison). In Experiment 1, we established that all chimpanzees preferred single banana pieces to ...

Bilateral lesions in the Ventromedial nucleus of hypothalamus (VMH) cause hyperphagia and a preference for high lipid, high carbohydrate diet. Reversible lesion by procaine microinfusion produces a decrease in serum glucose and immunoreactive insulin levels. In the present study the effect of procaine microinfusion on feeding behavior and taste preference ...

Stands of the giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, frequently suffer attack by grazing organisms and in some cases complete destruction has been observed. The present investigation of the feeding habits of grazing organisms is primarily concerned with food preferences. Discrimination in choice of plant foods was examined in 11 common invertebrate ...

INTRODUCTION: Cancer-related anorexia is traditionally considered part of a complex but ill-defined anorexia-cachexia syndrome in which anorexia is intimately associated with other gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and weight loss. We surveyed cancer patients with anorexia to learn more about the relationship between anorexia and these symptoms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A 22-item ...

It is known that taste sensation plays important roles in various functions including appetite, nutriental choices, food intake and digestion. To study the modulation of digestive functions by taste stimulation, we measured the gastric emptying of experimental foods with appetitive or aversive tastes in Wistar male rats. Rats were randomly ...

Sensory-specific satiety (SSS) refers to the decline in evaluated pleasantness of a food when consumed as compared with other unconsumed foods. In two experiments it was investigated whether SSS is sensitive to manipulations of flavour intensity. In the first experiment, 40 participants (36 women) repeatedly consumed 20 ml of either ...

Orthonasal and retronasal olfaction processes differ. The aim of this study was to examine whether congruent and incongruent simultaneous gustatory stimuli influence orthonasal and retronasal odorant perception, using olfactory event-related potentials as a measure. Thirty-two young, healthy subjects (16 men, 16 women) took part in two test sessions. Olfactory event-related ...

This research presents the first quantitative evaluation of the olfactory acuity in extinct theropod dinosaurs. Olfactory ratios (i.e. the ratio of the greatest diameter of the olfactory bulb to the greatest diameter of the cerebral hemisphere) are analysed in order to infer the olfactory acuity and behavioural traits in theropods, ...

The sensory bias model for the evolution of mating preferences states that mating preferences evolve as correlated responses to selection on nonmating behaviors sharing a common sensory system. The critical assumption is that pleiotropy creates genetic correlations that affect the response to selection. I simulated selection on populations of neural ...

Abstract Taste perception plays a key role in determining individual food preferences and dietary habits. Individual differences in bitter, sweet, umami, sour, or salty taste perception may influence dietary habits, affecting nutritional status and nutrition-related chronic disease risk. In addition to these traditional taste modalities there is growing evidence that ...

A methodology based on descriptive analysis techniques used in the evaluation of human food has been successfully refined to allow for a human taste panel to profile the flavour and texture of a range of cat food products (CFP) and their component parts. Included in this method is the development ...

Non-obese individuals limit energy intake and maintain weight long-term. Knowledge of the mechanism they use to accomplish this could help in weight maintenance after weight loss and prevention of unneeded weight gain. The objective of the present study was to determine whether non-obese women use orosensory cues to limit short-term ...

Recent studies have produced mixed evidence about inequity aversion in nonhuman primates. Brosnan et al. [Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 272:253-258, 2005] found inequity aversion in chimpanzees and argued that effort is crucial, if subjects are to evaluate how they are rewarded in comparison ...