Topic: sliding friction

Human dietary preferences vary highly between individuals yet also conform to common principles. However, the neural encoding of specific nutrient and oral-sensory food properties and related decision-making are poorly understood. This investigation of human food choice sought to elucidate these mechanisms by utilising behavioural and neuroimaging techniques while participants tasted, evaluated, and selected specifically designed liquid foods, where food information was derived exclusively from oral sampling. Healthy, human participants (N = 42) provided valuations (as willingness-to-pay (WTP)

Nutrients and oral-sensory food qualities influence the subjective valuation of food. We recently showed that monkeys prefer sugar- and fat-rich foods, consistent with the integration of nutrient and oral-sensory properties into economic values to guide choice (Huang et al., 2021) and reinforcement learning (Huang & Grabenhorst, 2023). However, it is unclear how amygdala neurons, which encode subjective values during economic choice (Grabenhorst et al., 2012, Jezzini & Padoa-Schioppa, 2020), process nutrients and oral-sensory food attributes during choice. Here, we recorded the activit