The best part about Halloween is all the candies and the good food. In the context of Halloween & food, a new study has found that a special part of our brain lights up when we see food.
This section, known as the “ventral food component,” is located in the visual cortex of the brain, which is a region associated with the recognition of faces, objects, and words.
The Intruding System
The work entailed creating a computer model of the visual cortex area of the brain using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
The model was introduced to 1.2 million new food images. In turn, the model showered the team with plenty of responses.
Response from the Brain
The response was rather exciting. It didn’t matter what color the food images were for the AI model. Even black and white images still caused the reaction, albeit less powerfully. Additionally, the model was able to distinguish between food and things that resembled food.
The researchers discovered from the human data that certain people reacted slightly differently to processed foods like pizza and unprocessed foods like apples.
