A group of associate professor Wataru Sato and others at the Kokoro Research Center Kyoto University measured the brain activity of the presented food image by fMRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and investigated the mechanism in the brain that unconsciously feels emotions in food. I clarified.
“Food emotion processing”, which makes people feel “delicious” when they see food, plays an important role in human life.Psychological studies have shown that such emotional processing of food also occurs at the unconscious level, but the neural mechanisms that achieve the unconscious level of emotional processing of food have been unclear.
Therefore, the group measured the brain activity of 22 Japanese people with respect to food images presented unconsciously (subliminal so that they could not be seen) or consciously (so that they could be seen) by fMRI.As a result of analyzing brain activity, both unconscious and conscious responded strongly to food images on both sides of the amygdala, which is the emotional center in the brain.Also, only under conscious conditions, a large area of the neocortex was more active against food images.
This result is the world's first finding to elucidate the mechanism in the brain that unconsciously feels emotions in food.In addition, the results show that food unknowingly arouses emotions, suggesting that dieters should be aware of environmental food stimuli such as commercials. ..In the future, it is expected to be applied to develop foods that strongly arouse emotions based on brain activity data.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Amygdala activation during unconscious visual processing of food
