The Effects of Sweet, Bitter, Salty and Sour Stimuli on Alpha Rhythm. A Meg Study.

OBJECTIVE: the possible diff erences in processing gustatory stimuli in healthy subjects was investigated by magnetoencephalography (meg).

MATHERIAL AND METHOD: meg recordings were evaluated for 10 healthy volunteers (3 men within the age range 20-46 years, 7 women within the age range 10-28 years), with four diff erent gustatory stimuli: sweet, bi" er, sour and salty. Fast fourier transform was performed on meg epochs recorded for the above conditions and the eff ect of each kind of stimuli on alpha rhythm was examined.

OUTCOMES: A significant higher percent of alpha power was found irrespective of hemispheric side in all gustatory states located mainly at the occipital, le$ and right parietal lobes. One female volunteer experienced no statistically signifi cance when comparing normal with salty and sour taste respectively. Two female volunteers exhibited no statistically signifi cance when comparing their normal with their salty taste. One male volunteer experienced no statistically signifi cance when comparing the normalbitter and normal-salty states correspondingly. All the other subjects showed statistically signifi cant changes in alpha power for the 4 gustatory stimuli.

CONCLUSION: The pattern of activation caused by the four stimuli indicated elevated gustatory processing mechanisms. This cortical activation might have applicability in modulation of brain status.