The Estimation of Taste Preference Based on Prefrontal Cortex Activity

The purpose of this study is to develop a method for objective evaluation about preference of taste based on brain activities. To achieve this goal, we propose a system estimated the preference from subject’s brain activities by using sensitivity matrix. The system is able to estimate subject’s preference by taking advantage of change of cerebral blood flow based on brain activities in the frontal lobe. The effectiveness of the system was tested through experiment. We measured the subject’s brain activities during drinking a beverage by using near-infrared spectroscopy and verified the effectiveness of the system from the data. From the results, an interesting data on relationship the psychological preference and brain activities in the frontal lobe was obtained. The estimated values corresponded to subject’s psychological values. The obtained data suggest that the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The finding results are a step toward identifying psychological preference of taste.