What can the brain teach us about winemaking? An fMRI study of alcohol level preferences

Ram Frost, Ileana Quiñones, Maria Veldhuizen, Jose Iñaki Alava, Dana Small, Manuel Carreiras

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

Over the last few decades, wine makers have been producing wines with a higher alcohol content, assuming that they are more appreciated by consumers. To test this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic imaging to compare reactions of human subjects to different types of wine, focusing on brain regions critical for flavor processing and food reward. Participants were presented with carefully matched pairs of high- and low-alcohol content red wines, without informing them of any of the wine attributes. Contrary to expectation, significantly greater activation was found for low-alcohol than for high-alcohol content wines in brain regions that are sensitive to taste intensity, including the insula as well as the cerebellum. Wines were closely matched for all physical attributes except for alcohol content, thus we interpret the preferential response to the low-alcohol content wines as arising from topdown modulation due to the low alcohol content wines inducing greater attentional exploration of aromas and flavours. The findings raise intriguing possibilities for objectively testing hypotheses regarding methods of producing a highly complex product such as wine.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0119220
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume10
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Mar 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Frost et al.

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