We often make action decisions unknowingly in various aspects of our lives.For example, when I see food, I seem to be conscious of "let's eat, no, let's stop", and in fact, the decision is made unconsciously.A series of these casual actions form eating habits, but it has not been fully elucidated how the brain manipulates judgments and decisions in places that are not related to the person's consciousness.

　Therefore, the research group examined what kind of cranial nerve activity occurs when a photograph of food is presented without the person being aware of it, and how it is related to daily eating behavior.

　First, when the cranial nerve and autonomic nerve activities when the food image was presented unconsciously were analyzed, it was found that the sympathetic nerve was more actively excited after the food image was presented than before the presentation.In addition, when looking at the relationship with the degree of restraint (patience) of eating in individual daily life, it was found that those who have sympathetic nerve excitement after presenting food images tend to be unable to endure when they want to eat.

　This result suggests that judgments and decisions regarding eating behavior may be influenced by the habits of the unconsciously working brain.Elucidating the mechanism of the unconscious cognitive process is important for improving lifestyle distortions seen in modern people such as unbalanced eating behavior and solving health problems such as obesity, overweight, and loss of appetite in the elderly. It will be a good clue.In the future, he will investigate how this unconscious habit of the brain affects food and health at each life stage of real life.

Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Neural activity induced by visual food stimuli presented out of awareness: a preliminary magnetoencephalography study