The temporal change in the cortical activations due to salty and sweet tastes in humans: fMRI and time–intensity sensory evaluation

It remains unclear how the cerebral cortex of humans perceives taste temporally, and whether or not such objective data about the brain show a correlation with the current widely used conventional methods of taste–intensity sensory evaluation. The aim of this study was to investigate the difference in the time–intensity profile between salty and sweet tastes in the human brain. The time–intensity profiles of functional MRI (fMRI) data of the human taste cortex were analyzed using finite impulse response analysis for a direct interpretation in terms of the peristimulus time signal. Also, time–intensity sensory evaluations for tastes were performed under the same condition as fMRI to confirm the reliability of the temporal profile in the fMRI data. The time–intensity profile for the brain activations due to a salty taste changed more rapidly than those due to a sweet taste in the human brain cortex and was also similar to the time–intensity sensory evaluation, confirming the reliability of the temporal profile of the fMRI data. In conclusion, the time–intensity profile using finite impulse response analysis for fMRI data showed that there was a temporal difference in the neural responses between salty and sweet tastes over a given period of time. This indicates that there might be taste-specific temporal profiles of activations in the human brain.

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