SynthesisNutrients2020
How Does Our Brain Process Sugars and Non-Nutritive Sweeteners Differently: A Systematic Review on Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies.
Synthesis in Nutrients, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain and physiological responses to flavored waters with different sweeteners: a randomized crossover study in healthy young adults.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2026Trial
- Trial
- The Neural and Perceptual Effects of Stevia During Retronasal Occlusion.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
- Liking of Sweetness and Amount of Accidental Swallowing are Associated with the Ergogenic Effect of Mouth Rinses on Walking Energy Expenditure in Recreationally Active Men.International journal of exercise science · 2026Article
- Non-nutritive sweeteners and body weight in children with type 1 and type 2 diabetes: a critical narrative review of current evidence, methodological challenges, biological mechanisms, and clinical implications.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Retro nasal blockade reduces the neural processing of sucrose in the human brain.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2025Article
- EEG-Based Analysis of Neural Responses to Sweeteners: Effects of Type and Concentration.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Neural Mechanisms and Alterations of Sweet Sensing: Insights from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- A low-calorie rebaudioside D-glucose-sodium sweetener matches sucrose in palatability and neural responses in a functional MRI study of healthy adults.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Binge-Eating Precursors in Children and Adolescents: Neurodevelopment, and the Potential Contribution of Ultra-Processed Foods.Nutrients · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This systematic review aimed to reveal the differential brain processing of sugars and sweeteners in humans. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies published up to 2019 were retrieved from two databases and were included into the review if they evaluated the effects of both sugars and sweeteners on the subjects' brain responses, during tasting and right after ingestion. Twenty studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The number of participants per study ranged from 5 to 42, with a total number of study participants at 396. Seven studies recruited both males and females, 7 were all-female and 6 were all-male. There was no consistent pattern showing that sugar or sweeteners elicited larger brain responses. Commonly involved brain regions were insula/operculum, cingulate and striatum, brainstem, hypothalamus and the ventral tegmental area. Future studies, therefore, should recruit a larger sample size, adopt a standardized fasting duration (preferably 12 h overnight, which is the most common practice and brain responses are larger in the state of hunger), and reported results with familywise-error rate (FWE)-corrected statistics. Every study should report the differential brain activation between sugar and non-nutritive sweetener conditions regardless of the complexity of their experiment design. These measures would enable a meta-analysis, pooling data across studies in a meaningful manner.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.