Universität zu Köln

Frost, Ram ORCID: 0000-0002-5625-0813, Quinones, Ileana ORCID: 0000-0002-0288-364X, Veldhuizen, Maria ORCID: 0000-0001-8375-7719, Alava, Jose-Inaki, Small, Dana and Carreiras, Manuel ORCID: 0000-0001-6726-7613 (2015). What Can the Brain Teach Us about Winemaking? An fMRI Study of Alcohol Level Preferences. PLoS One, 10 (3). SAN FRANCISCO: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE. ISSN 1932-6203

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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.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Frost, Ram UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-5625-0813 UNSPECIFIED Quinones, Ileana UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-0288-364X UNSPECIFIED Veldhuizen, Maria UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-8375-7719 UNSPECIFIED Alava, Jose-Inaki UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Small, Dana UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Carreiras, Manuel UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-6726-7613 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-404853
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0119220
Journal or Publication Title:	PLoS One
Volume:	10
Number:	3
Date:	2015
Publisher:	PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Place of Publication:	SAN FRANCISCO
ISSN:	1932-6203
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language NEURAL REPRESENTATIONS; ACTIVATION; ACQUISITION; INFORMATION; INTENSITY; ATTENTION; CORTEX; TASTE Multiple languages Multidisciplinary Sciences Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/40485