Measurement of human brain activity evoked by stimulation of beer bitterness using magnetoencephalography

We tried to detect the human brain activity evoked by beer taste using magnetoencephalography. Subjects did not perceive bitterness and tactile stimulus differences between water and commercial beer, through a small hole of the taste stimulator, but they perceived bitterness for the beer enriched with isohumulones. The increase in the magnetic fields after the stimulation onset was observed for the stimulus of the beer with addition of isohumulones but was not observed for the stimulus of water or commercial beer, supporting the subject's comments. In 76.2% of the all measurements for the beer enriched with isohumulones, the equivalent current dipoles, placed on a subject's 3-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging, were located at the transition between the parietal operculum and the insular cortex with latency at 326.7 +/- 115.5 ms. These results indicated that the brain activity stimulated by beer bitterness could be detected.