Food preference and gender are associated with medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions functional near-infrared spectroscopy responses during eating: An exploratory study in young adults

Even if they have no dementia, some elderly people find it difficult to imagine the food they may want to eat. However, research on appetite assessment in older adults with poor appetite remains limited, due to the lack of a method that can easily measure brain function in clinical settings. In this study, we aim to clarify the relationship between activity in the food-dependent medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions (MFPR) and food preferences and consumption frequency in healthy young adults, with the aim of establishing methods for assessing food preferences and appetite in elderly individuals with poor appetite using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). All young participants were asked about their food preferences and intake frequency using a questionnaire, and they were instructed to look and then eat the control dish (CD; typical Japanese home-cooked meal) and their preferred dish (PD; each participant purchased the dish themselves on the day of the experiments) on separate days, and the activity of the MFPR in each participant was recorded by fNIRS. We found that the activity of the MFPR during “eating” were differ depend on the dishes, from 9 min after the start eating. Moreover, we found that the preference of foods was also associated with the activity of MFPR during “eating”. These exploratory findings suggest that MFPR fNIRS signals during eating may be associated with food preference-related variables.