ArticleChemical senses2013
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex response to concentrated sucrose reflects liking rather than sweet quality coding.
Article in Chemical senses, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Basal ganglia lateralization in different types of reward.Brain imaging and behavior · 2020Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies on Sweet Taste in Humans.The Journal of nutrition · 2020Pooled it
- Neural Mechanisms and Alterations of Sweet Sensing: Insights from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The battle over "food addiction".Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- High-intensity sweet taste as a predictor of subjective alcohol responses to the ascending limb of an intravenous alcohol prime: an fMRI study.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Deficit Symptomatology of Schizophrenia Is Associated with Attenuated Taste Identification: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- A role for reward valuation in the serotonergic modulation of impulsivity.Psychopharmacology · 2021Article
- Ultraprocessed Food: Addictive, Toxic, and Ready for Regulation.Nutrients · 2020Article
- Differential Cerebral Gustatory Responses to Sucrose, Aspartame, and Stevia Using Gustatory Evoked Potentials in Humans.Nutrients · 2020Article
- Gustatory responses in macaque monkeys revealed with fMRI: Comments on taste, taste preference, and internal state.NeuroImage · 2019Article
- Activity of frontal pole cortex reflecting hedonic tone of food and drink: fNIRS study in humans.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Frontostriatal pathways gate processing of behaviorally relevant reward dimensions.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Family history of alcoholism and the human brain response to oral sucrose.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2018Article
- HPA Axis Interactions with Behavioral Systems.Comprehensive Physiology · 2016Review
- Value and probability coding in a feedback-based learning task utilizing food rewards.Journal of neurophysiology · 2015Article
- Sweet taste liking is associated with impulsive behaviors in humans.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
The perception of the pleasantness of sweet tastes varies widely across individuals. Here, we exploit these differences to isolate brain response to sweet-taste pleasantness while controlling for intensity, quality, and physiological significance. Thirty subjects participated in functional MRI scanning while consuming individually calibrated weak and strong sucrose solutions. All subjects found the weak sweet taste to be neutral in pleasantness, but half of the subjects found strong sweet taste pleasant (likers), whereas half found strong sweet taste unpleasant (dislikers). Greater response was observed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to the sucrose when it was rated pleasant versus neutral compared with unpleasant versus neutral. This suggests that response in the vmPFC underlies sweet-taste preference, this region is preferentially sensitive to affectively positive tastes, and it is the positive value rather than physiological significance, quality, or intensity that drives responses here. Likers versus dislikers did not differ in their diet, alcohol use, body weight, gender, or taq1A allele status, but likers were more likely to report emotional eating. None of these factors influenced response in the vmPFC.
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