Multimodal Food Perception: Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies of Food Cues

Claudia Huerta¹, Timothy Q. Duong¹

The aim of the present study was to determine the concurrence in the brain regions activated in response to multimodal food cue stimuli in healthy normal weight adults. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis was performed for: i) visual food cues, contrasted between food and nonfood pictures, ii) taste food cues, contrasted between food and tasteless solution, and iii) olfactory food cues contrasted between food/pleasant and nonfood/unpleasant odors. Different neural systems were observed to be associated with each modality but the insula was commonly engaged across the different presentations of food cues.we have identified and compared the neural systems involved in different food cue presentations in healthy normal weight adults. These findings have the potential to improve our understanding of food perception, advance research in neurophysiology and neuropathology of hunger and craving, and help develop novel therapeutic strategies targeting obesity.