title: The temporal change in the cortical activations due to salty and sweet tastes in humans:  fMRI and time-intensity sensory evaluation.
abstract: It remains unclear how the cerebral cortex of humans perceives taste temporally, and whether or not such objective data about the brain show a correlation with the current widely used conventional methods of taste-intensity sensory evaluation. The aim of this study was to investigate the difference in the time-intensity profile between salty and sweet tastes in the human brain. The time-intensity profiles of functional MRI (fMRI) data of the human taste cortex were analyzed using finite impulse response analysis for a direct interpretation in terms of the peristimulus time signal. Also, time-intensity sensory evaluations for tastes were performed under the same condition as fMRI to confirm the reliability of the temporal profile in the fMRI data. The time-intensity profile for the brain activations due to a salty taste changed more rapidly than those due to a sweet taste in the human brain cortex and was also similar to the time-intensity sensory evaluation, confirming the reliability of the temporal profile of the fMRI data. In conclusion, the time-intensity profile using finite impulse response analysis for fMRI data showed that there was a temporal difference in the neural responses between salty and sweet tastes over a given period of time. This indicates that there might be taste-specific temporal profiles of activations in the human brain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Faculty of Dental Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Tazuko K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Goto
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tokumori
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yoshiura
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kobayashi
authors.forename: Yasuhiko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Honda
authors.forename: Yuzo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ninomiya
authors.forename: Kazunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoshiura
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012965:Sodium Chloride / Q000494:pharmacology*; D013395:Sucrose / Q000494:pharmacology*; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D012965:Sodium Chloride; D013395:Sucrose