title: What can the brain teach us about winemaking? An fMRI study of alcohol level preferences.
abstract: Over the last few decades, wine makers have been producing wines with a higher alcohol content, assuming that they are more appreciated by consumers. To test this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic imaging to compare reactions of human subjects to different types of wine, focusing on brain regions critical for flavor processing and food reward. Participants were presented with carefully matched pairs of high- and low-alcohol content red wines, without informing them of any of the wine attributes. Contrary to expectation, significantly greater activation was found for low-alcohol than for high-alcohol content wines in brain regions that are sensitive to taste intensity, including the insula as well as the cerebellum. Wines were closely matched for all physical attributes except for alcohol content, thus we interpret the preferential response to the low-alcohol content wines as arising from top-down modulation due to the low alcohol content wines inducing greater attentional exploration of aromas and flavours. The findings raise intriguing possibilities for objectively testing hypotheses regarding methods of producing a highly complex product such as wine.
authors.affiliation: The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel; BCBL, Basque center of Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain; Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, United States of America.
authors.forename: Ram
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frost
authors.affiliation: BCBL, Basque center of Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.
authors.forename: Ileana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Quiñones
authors.affiliation: The John B. Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, United States of America.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Veldhuizen
authors.affiliation: Basque Culinary Center, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.
authors.forename: Jose-Iñaki
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Alava
authors.affiliation: The John B. Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, United States of America; Yale Medical School, New Haven, United States of America; University of Cologne, Köln, Germany.
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Small
authors.affiliation: BCBL, Basque center of Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain; IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain; Department of Basque Language and Communication, University of the Basque Country EHU/UPV, Bilbao, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carreiras
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D000431:Ethanol / Q000008:administration & dosage; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D013649:Taste; D014920:Wine
chemical_list: D000431:Ethanol