1,721,054 research outputs found
We are what we eat: How food is represented in our mind/brain
No full textDespite the essential role of food in our lives, we have little understanding of the way our knowledge about food is organized in the brain. At birth, human infants exhibit very few food preferences, and do not yet know much about what is edible and what is not. A multisensory learning development will eventually turn young infants into omnivore adults, for whom deciding what to eat becomes an effortful task. Recognizing food constitutes an essential step in this decisional process. In this paper we examine how concepts about food are represented in the human brain. More specifically, we first analyze how brain-damaged patients recognize natural and manufactured food, and then examine these patterns in the light of the sensory-functional hypothesis and the domain-specific hypothesis. Secondly, we discuss how concepts of food are represented depending on whether we embrace the embodied view or the disembodied view. We conclude that research on food recognition and on the organization of knowledge about food must also take into account some aspects specific to food category, the relevance of which has not been sufficiently recognized and investigated to date
What makes a food healthy? Sex differences in what is associated to healthiness evaluations
No full textFood healthiness evaluations are important precursors of food choices as health beliefs guide a large portion of our food intake. In the present study we investigated the healthiness evaluations of males and females and the extent to which valence, arousal, familiarity, hedonic value, and perceived calorie are associated to the healthiness attributed to different food. Ninety-two healthy normal-weight adults evaluated Low-Calorie foods (e.g., salad) and high-calorie foods (e.g., chips) on valence, arousal, familiarity, hedonic value, perceived calorie content, and healthiness. For both females and males, valence and perceived calorie content are associated with healthiness ratings of low-calorie food as well as with high-calorie food. The more positive and less caloric is considered a food, the more is considered healthy. These are the only dimensions linked to healthiness ratings of low-calorie foods. Instead, high-calorie food healthiness is also associated to its arousal and hedonic value for females while to its familiarity for males. These results highlight key dimensions related to how healthy a food is considered by lay persons. Moreover, they show that different dimensions are associated to healthiness of a food for females and males. Even though there are dimensions associated to healthiness evaluation irrespective of the sex and of the type of food (i.e., valence, perceived calorie content), other dimensions relate only to high-calorie food and are relevant either for females (arousal, hedonic value) or for males (familiarity). Thus, different dimensions could be leveraged to develop sex-targeted interventions depending on the type of food
Neural correlates of the energetic value of food during visual processing and response inhibition
No full textPrevious research showed that human brain regions involved in reward and cognitive control are responsive to visually presented food stimuli, in particular high-energy foods. However, it is still to be determined whether the preference towards high-energy foods depends on their higher energy density (kcal/gram), or is based on the difference in energy content of the food items (total amount of kcal). Here we report the results of an fMRI study in which normal-weight healthy participants processed food images during a one-back task or were required to inhibit their response towards food stimuli during a Go/No-Go task. High-energy density (HD) and low-energy density (LD) foods were matched for energy content displayed. Food-related kitchen objects (OBJ) were used as control stimuli. The lateral occipital complex and the orbitofrontal cortex showed consistent higher activity in response to HD than LD foods, both during visual processing and response inhibition. This result suggests that images of HD foods, even when the amount of food shown is not associated with a higher energy content, elicit preferential visual processing - possibly involving attentional processes - and trigger a response from the reward system. We conclude that the human brain is able to distinguish food energy densities of food items during both active visual processing and response inhibition
Food perception and categorization: From food/no-food to different types of food
No full textThe ability to categorize food and nonfood correctly and to distinguish between different foods is essential for our survival. Because of our omnivore nature and because of the food-rich environment in which we live, categorization processes involving food are particularly complex. The extent of the literature on this subject is an indication of our limited understanding of the mental processes underlying food perception, categorization, and choice. The ability to categorize food requires integration of multisensory information and semantic memory with varying contextual information and is modulated by numerous factors. On the one hand, food features (e.g., energy content, level of transformation) modulate our perceptual and categorization processes; on the other hand, categorization processes are also modulated by the perceiver's temporary states (e.g., internal states such as hunger) and more lasting characteristics (e.g., body mass index, gender). Thus, food categorization provides a very rich test-case for any model of categorization
La mansio di via Valletta
No full textInquadramento del sito della mansio di Forum Gallorum, indagato nel corso degli scavi condotti a Castelfranco Emilia (via Valletta) nel corso degli anni 2017 e 2018. Dal punto di vista numismatico, la campagna di scavo del 2017 ha restituito ventidue monete romane, inquadrabili complessivamente in un arco di tempo compreso tra il II secolo a.C. e il IV-V d.C
“They are all alike”: When negative minority outgroups are generalized onto superordinate inclusive outgroups
No full textTwo studies investigated outgroup-to-outgroup generalization, addressing whether members of negatively perceived minority outgroups are perceived as prototypical of larger partially-inclusive outgroups and whether this tendency is enhanced under intergroup threat. Both experimental studies were conducted with Italian undergraduate participants. Experiment 1 (N = 186) tested whether Roma are generalized onto (i.e., perceived as prototypical of) Romanians to a higher extent under intergroup realistic and symbolic threat than under no-threat. It also explored the direction of the phenomenon and its underlying mechanism. Experiment 2 (N = 90) provided additional evidence on the effect of threat on such generalization phenomenon considering a different pair of groups (Islamic terrorists, Arabs) and employing a less blatant measure of generalization. Overall, these studies provided consistent evidence of outgroup-to-outgroup generalization, clarifying the conditions of its occurrence. These results contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of outgroup-to-outgroup generalization and of its impact on outgroup perception and prejudice
Antibacterial and bioactive composite bone cements
No full textBackground: Peri-prosthetic infections are characterized by high resistance to systemic antibiotic therapy. In this work, commercial PMMA-based bone cement has been loaded with a bioactive glass doped with silver ions, with the purpose to prepare composite bone cement containing a single inorganic phase with both bioactive and antibacterial properties, able to prevent bacterial contamination. Methods: The glass distribution in the polymeric matrix, the composites radio-opacity, the bending strength and modulus, the morphology of the fracture surfaces, the bioactivity in Simulated Body Fluid (SBF) and the antibacterial effect were evaluated. The glass particles dispersion in the polymeric matrix and their exposition on the polymer surface have been assessed by morphological and compositional characterizations via Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersion Spectroscopy (EDS). Results: The introduction of the silver-doped bioactive glass allowed imparting an intrinsic radio-opacity to the cement. The bending strength and modulus were influenced by the glass preparation, amount and grain-size. The polymeric matrix did not affect the composite ability to induce hydroxyapatite precipitation on its surface (bioactivity). Moreover, antibacterial test (inhibition halo evaluation) revealed a significant antibacterial effect toward S. aureus, Bacillus, E. coli and C. albicans strains. Conclusion: The obtained results motivate further investigations and future in vivo tests
Implicit and explicit evaluations of foods: The natural and transformed dimension
No full textIn Western societies, choosing what to eat can be a demanding task due to the excessive availability of food. To make our feeding decisions more complex, our explicit and implicit evaluations of foods may differ as they are multi-attribute stimuli. Previous research has focused on investigating implicit and explicit evaluations towards high and low energy dense foods, the main finding being that participants’ hunger level and dietary habits (restrained eating) modulate such evaluations. In the present study, we investigated whether normal-weight healthy individuals assigned different values to natural and transformed foods depending on implicit (assessed with the Implicit Association Test) or explicit measures (assessed with explicit ratings), and whether participants’ hunger level or dietary habits modulated the responses at both levels. Our results showed that while for natural foods implicit and explicit measures (healthiness) seemed to converge, dietary habits or hunger level did not affect such evaluations. For transformed foods, a dissociation between implicit and explicit measures (healthiness) seemed to emerge, along with a strong modulation of dietary habits and hunger level on the evaluations of such foods. Thus, these findings reveal how the type of food can modulate evaluations at both the implicit and explicit level and highlight a critical role of long-term health consequences and eating patterns in food evaluations
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY MATTERS! THE DIFFERENTIAL EFFECT OF EMBODIMENT ON THE PROCESSING OF MODERATELY VS. STRONGLY EMOTIONAL MATERIAL
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A bait we cannot avoid: Food-induced motor distractibility
No full textFood is so central to humans’ life that keeping our mind away from it is not an easy task. Because of its strong motivational value, food cues attract our attention. However, often food is truly not relevant to our on-going activities. In the present study we investigated the distracting role that task-irrelevant foods (natural and manufactured) and food-cues play in performing goal-directed reaching movements. We explored whether spatial and temporal parameters of reaching movement were influenced by the presence of task-irrelevant stimuli (i.e., distractor effect), and whether this effect was modulated by participants’ implicit and explicit ratings of food items and participants’ tendency to restrain their diet. First we found that the movement trajectory veered consistently toward food items and food-related distractors. Second, we found that participants’ own evaluation of natural and manufactured food played a differential predicting role of the magnitude of temporal and spatial parameters of the distractor effect induced by these types of food. We conclude that perceptual and attentional systems provide preferential access to stimuli in the environment with high significance for organisms
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