Reading Salt Activates Gustatory Brain Regions: fMRI Evidence for Semantic Grounding in a Novel Sensory Modality

Barrós‐Loscertales, Alfonso; González, Julio; Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Ventura‐Campos, Noelia; Bustamante, Juan Carlos; Costumero, Víctor; Parcet, Maria Antònia; Ávila, César

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr324

Cited by 172 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…This is in accordance with our previous findings, where the effect of BMI status was under consideration (Ghemulet et al, 2014). Semantic representations of taste-related words are closely related with certain brain regions responsible for gustatory processing and linked to activating taste domains (Barrós-Loscertales et al, 2012;Goldberg, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2006). It has been proposed that taste knowledge (words semantically related to taste) activate the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

The effect of alcohol on the nature of lexical representations in different taste domains

Baskini¹,

Proios²

2016

Psychol. Thought

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Moderate alcohol consumption may be involved in cognitive feedback mechanisms (Hofmann & Friese, 2008), participants execute verbal fluency test (VFT) better (Cerhan et al., 1998) and there is positive association between sweet taste and excessive alcohol intake (Lange, Kampov-Polevoy, & Garbutt, 2010). We investigate the immediate pharmacological consequences of moderate to light alcohol consumption in verbal fluency and categorical sorting within the different taste domains (i.e. sweet, salty, sour and bitter). Our hypothesis is that subjects under the influence of light to moderate alcohol will produce more items in the sweet domain. 53 healthy adults had moderate alcohol consumption and were compared in two semantic tasks to 53 adults, who did not drink alcohol. Mann-Whitney U tests showed that the total number of clusters, switches, and repetitions were equal between the two groups in all taste domains (p-values: .211, .401, and .684 respectively). The number of responses in the alcohol group generated more disinhibiting intrusive words during the VFTs as compared to the control group (p-value: <.001). VFTs and the order of taste preference in the card-sorting task showed positive correlation and agreement. Light to moderate alcohol did not affect verbal fluency. However, participants under the influence of alcohol generated significantly more errors in the VFTs that were emotionally laden. This corroborates with research that certain emotions are innervated with taste domains. This leaves open question about the effects of alcohol on decision making in eating and executive functions as they relate to lexical representations.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

The effect of alcohol on the nature of lexical representations in different taste domains

Baskini¹,

Proios²

2016

Psychol. Thought

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“…When people encounter a food cue, they simulate an experience of consuming the food, which can then motivate them to actually consume it (Papies, 2013;. As much evidence indicates, these eating simulations activate taste and reward areas similar to those that become active during actual food consumption, as well as other areas associated with eating (e.g., Barros-Loscertales et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A core eating network and its modulations underlie diverse eating phenomena

Chen

Papies

Barsalou

2016

Brain and Cognition

130

105

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We propose that a core eating network and its modulations account for much of what is currently known about the neural activity underlying a wide range of eating phenomena in humans (excluding homeostasis and related phenomena). The core eating network is closely adapted from a network that Kaye, Fudge, and Paulus (2009) proposed to explain the neurocircuitry of eating, including a ventral reward pathway and a dorsal control pathway. In a review across multiple literatures that focuses on experiments using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we first show that neural responses to food cues, such as food pictures, utilize the same core eating network as eating. Consistent with the theoretical perspective of grounded cognition, food cues activate eating simulations that produce reward predictions about a perceived food and potentially motivate its consumption. Reviewing additional literatures, we then illustrate how various factors modulate the core eating network, increasing and/or decreasing activity in subsets of its neural areas. These modulating factors include food significance (palatability, hunger), body mass index (BMI, overweight/obesity), eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating), and various eating goals (losing weight, hedonic pleasure, healthy living). By viewing all these phenomena as modulating a core eating network, it becomes possible to understand how they are related to one another within this common theoretical framework. Finally, we discuss future directions for better establishing the core eating network, its modulations, and their implications for behavior.

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“…We aimed to find an equal number of words with strong perceptual associations for each modality. To do this, we consulted the stimuli list of Lynott and Connell (2013) as well as that of Mulatti et al (2014) for words with sounds associations, Barros-Loscertales et al (2012) for words with gustatory associations, and Gonzalez et al (2006) for words with olfactory associations. Despite our best attempts to curate equal numbers of words for each modality, some words overlapped between the olfactory and gustatory modality, leading to a list of 485 words in total.…”

Section: Study 1: Modality Ratings Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When we read words with strong sensory meanings we recruit the perceptual system to aid in comprehension, reflecting socalled Bmental simulation^(e.g., Barsalou, 1999;Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002;Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001). Semantic knowledge of perceptual information has been shown to activate perceptual regions of the brain (Golberg, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2006), including words with strong visual associations (e.g., Simmons et al, 2007), auditory associations (e.g., Kiefer, Sim, Herrnberger, Grothe, & Hoenig, 2008), olfactory associations (Gonzalez et al, 2006), and gustatory associations (Barros-Loscertales et al, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Dutch modality exclusivity norms: Simulating perceptual modality in space

Speed

Majid

2017

Behav Res

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Perceptual information is important for the meaning of nouns. We present modality exclusivity norms for 485 Dutch nouns rated on visual, auditory, haptic, gustatory, and olfactory associations. We found these nouns are highly multimodal. They were rated most dominant in vision, and least in olfaction. A factor analysis identified two main dimensions: one loaded strongly on olfaction and gustation (reflecting joint involvement in flavor), and a second loaded strongly on vision and touch (reflecting joint involvement in manipulable objects). In a second study, we validated the ratings with similarity judgments. As expected, words from the same dominant modality were rated more similar than words from different dominant modalities; but -more importantly -this effect was enhanced when word pairs had high modality strength ratings. We further demonstrated the utility of our ratings by investigating whether perceptual modalities are differentially experienced in space, in a third study. Nouns were categorized into their dominant modality and used in a lexical decision experiment where the spatial position of words was either in proximal or distal space. We found words dominant in olfaction were processed faster in proximal than distal space compared to the other modalities, suggesting olfactory information is mentally simulated as Bclose^to the body. Finally, we collected ratings of emotion (valence, dominance, and arousal) to assess its role in perceptual space simulation, but the valence did not explain the data. So, words are processed differently depending on their perceptual associations, and strength of association is captured by modality exclusivity ratings.

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Reading Salt Activates Gustatory Brain Regions: fMRI Evidence for Semantic Grounding in a Novel Sensory Modality

Cited by 172 publications

References 82 publications

The effect of alcohol on the nature of lexical representations in different taste domains

The effect of alcohol on the nature of lexical representations in different taste domains

A core eating network and its modulations underlie diverse eating phenomena

Dutch modality exclusivity norms: Simulating perceptual modality in space

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