[Cell Sub-Journal] MIT's latest research: "gluttonous ghosts" neurons, see food and shine

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Author: Sophia

Imagine a sticky pizza, a bunch of crispy fries, and ice cream dripping on a sugar cone on a hot summer day

"Food is at the heart of

overview

 01 

More than 20 years ago, while studying the ventral visual flow (the part of the brain that recognizes objects), Kanwisher discovered cortical regions

fMRI reaction dataset

 02 

To reveal the underlying structure of the ventral visual flow, Kanwisher and Khosla decided to analyze a large, publicly available dataset of whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reactions, so they looked at thousands of images

To do this, the researchers employed a mathematical approach that allowed them to discover populations of nerves that could not be identified from traditional fMRI data

Visual category

 03 

Kanwisher's lab has previously used new analytical methods on fMRI data from the auditory cortex that can tease out the responses

Interestingly, a fifth population also emerged, which seemed selective about food images

"We were initially very confused about this because food is not a visually homogeneous category," Khosla said

Food-specific populations, which researchers call ventral food components (VFCs), appear to be distributed across two clusters of neurons located on either side of the

"We believe that food selectivity was previously difficult to characterize because people who were selective for food were mixed with people nearby who responded clearly to other stimulus attributes

Food vs.

 04 

The researchers also used the data to train a computational model of VFC, which is based on a model developed by Murty for facial and location recognition regions of the brain

"These matched stimuli have very similar visual properties, but their main properties that differ are edible versus inedible," Khosla said

Based on their analysis of human fMRI data, the researchers found that in some subjects, the VFC responded slightly more to processed foods like pizza than to unprocessed foods

The researchers also hope to study when and how this region becomes specialized in early childhood, and how it communicates
with other parts of the brain.

Another question is whether this food-selective population will be seen in other animals, such as monkeys, which do not have cultural significance
for food as humans.

Resources:

https://medicalxpress.
com/news/2022-08-scientists-population-neurons-images-food.
html

This article is intended to introduce the progress of medical research and cannot be used as a reference for
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