Workshop 3 O13–O18

INTRODUCTION: Taste is one of the primary reinforcements of eating and drives food preferences and eating habits. Comparative neurophysiologic studies suggest a functional hierarchy in the gustatory cortex, with the insula-frontal operculum region involved in quality analysis and the orbitofrontal cortex and other limbic=paralimbic areas involved in motivation and reinforcement. Furthermore, recent studies suggest a functional lateralization of the brain representation of taste in humans. METHODS: We used positron emission tomography and measures of regional cerebral blood ̄ow (rCBF) to describe the anatomy and investigate the functional lateralization of the brain's response to the gustatory perception of a liquid formula meal in the context of extreme hunger (36-h fast) in 44 right-handed subjects (M=Fˆ 22=22, 31 8 y, 31 11% body fat, mean SD). Interhemispheric asymmetry inactivated regions was assessed using a t-Test. Subjective ratings of palatability (hedonic value) of a solution similar to the liquid tormula were collected using a 9-point Likert scale (9ˆmax palatability). RESULTS: