416 research outputs found
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
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
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
Le categorie sociali e l’organizzazione lessicale-semantica delle conoscenze
No full textA long-lasting question for philosophers and cognitive neuroscientists has been how knowledge is organized in our brain. Insights from neuropsychological studies reporting patients with a selective impairment for processing natural or artificial objects in cognitive tasks led to the development of important theoretical advancements on semantic knowl- edge organization. However, very little has been done to date regarding the way humans organize knowledge about other humans and social categories. Starting from the current state of the research on the organization of semantic memory, we review the reasons whereby social groups might be a category on its own and, as such, could have a distinct and separate neural correlate
Intracranial arterio-venous malformations. Gamma Knife radiosurgery as a primary therapeutic option.
No full textWhat 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
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