Food preference and gender are associated with medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions functional near-infrared spectroscopy responses during eating: An exploratory study in young adults.

Overview

Authors: Yusuke Takatsuru¹, Yuka Sekine¹, Hideyasu Sato², Tomoko Osera³

ORCID iDs: Yusuke Takatsuru

Division of Multidimensional Clinical Medicine, Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, Toyo University, Asaka, Saitama, Japan
Division of Applied Nutrition, Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, Toyo University, Asaka, Saitama, Japan
Department of Food Life Sciences, Toyo University, Asaka, Saitama, Japan

Institutions: Toyo University (Japan)

Journal: PloS one, volume 21, issue 8, article e0343481

Dates: received 17 February 2026; accepted 30 June 2026; published online 3 August 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0343481 · PMID 42545988 · PMCID PMC13432127 · OpenAlex W7172275109

Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)

Status: data only

Categories: fNIRS (modality), human (organism), systems (subfield)

Methods: Statistics, Smoothing, state filtering, decompositions, Machine learning, Spectral & time-frequency

MeSH: Eating*, Food Preferences*, Prefrontal Cortex*, Adult, Appetite, Feeding Behavior, Female, Humans, Male, Sex Factors, Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared, Young Adult (* major topic)

Journal subjects: Biology and Life Sciences, Nutrition, Diet, Food, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physiology, Physiological Processes, Eating, Research and Analysis Methods, Mathematical and Statistical Techniques, Statistical Methods, Multivariate Analysis, Principal Component Analysis, Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics, Appetite, Health Care, Geriatric Care, People and Places, Population Groupings, Age Groups, Adults, Elderly, Regression Analysis, Organisms, Eukaryota, Plants, Vegetables

Topic: Nutritional Studies and Diet (Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Medicine), according to OpenAlex

Funding: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (20K23265)

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 36 references in the paper

Abstract

Even if they have no dementia, some elderly people find it difficult to imagine the food they may want to eat. However, research on appetite assessment in older adults with poor appetite remains limited, due to the lack of a method that can easily measure brain function in clinical settings. In this study, we aim to clarify the relationship between activity in the food-dependent medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions (MFPR) and food preferences and consumption frequency in healthy young adults, with the aim of establishing methods for assessing food preferences and appetite in elderly individuals with poor appetite using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). All young participants were asked about their food preferences and intake frequency using a questionnaire, and they were instructed to look and then eat the control dish (CD; typical Japanese home-cooked meal) and their preferred dish (PD; each participant purchased the dish themselves on the day of the experiments) on separate days, and the activity of the MFPR in each participant was recorded by fNIRS. We found that the activity of the MFPR during “eating” were differ depend on the dishes, from 9 min after the start eating. Moreover, we found that the preference of foods was also associated with the activity of MFPR during “eating”. These exploratory findings suggest that MFPR fNIRS signals during eating may be associated with food preference-related variables.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

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Data

Datasets cited

doi:10.17632/kp24r89jxc.1 — at the source; found in “Data Availability”

Data Availability

Data set of this study Mendeley Data DOI: 10.17632/kp24r89jxc.1.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

The history of this record: each version stored by the harvester or made by a correction of its authors or of the maintainers of its code, and what changed in its facts. The texts of the paper (its abstract, its availability statements) are not part of it; versions that changed only those are not listed.

Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 4 authors, 12 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 33 references.

Cite

This paper

Takatsuru, Y., Sekine, Y., Sato, H., & Osera, T. (2026). Food preference and gender are associated with medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions functional near-infrared spectroscopy responses during eating: An exploratory study in young adults. PloS one, 21(8), e0343481. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343481

BibTeX

@article{takatsuru2026food, author = {Takatsuru, Yusuke and Sekine, Yuka and Sato, Hideyasu and Osera, Tomoko}, title = {{Food preference and gender are associated with medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions functional near-infrared spectroscopy responses during eating: An exploratory study in young adults}}, journal = {PloS one}, year = {2026}, month = aug, volume = {21}, number = {8}, pages = {e0343481}, publisher = {PLOS}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0343481}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343481}, pmid = {42545988}, pmcid = {PMC13432127} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Takatsuru, Yusuke AU - Sekine, Yuka AU - Sato, Hideyasu AU - Osera, Tomoko TI - Food preference and gender are associated with medial/frontopolar prefrontal regions functional near-infrared spectroscopy responses during eating: An exploratory study in young adults T2 - PloS one J2 - PLoS One PY - 2026 DA - 2026/08/03 VL - 21 IS - 8 SP - e0343481 SN - 1932-6203 PB - PLOS DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0343481 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343481 LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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