The study shows that our brain is very fast in recognizing food and it takes only 108 milliseconds.

The visual impact of food on our mental processes can be influenced by various factors such as hunger, personal food preferences and our emotional state. However, recent research has provided insights into the cognitive processes and speed with which the human mind identifies food in its environment.

According to a report in new scientist A recent study at the University of Sydney, Australia, shows that our brain has the ability to recognize food objects in just 108 milliseconds. This new understanding of the visual perception of food can potentially be used in advertising to promote healthier choices.

Scientists know little about how food is processed, says Tom Carlson of the University of Sydney, Australia. “It’s unexpected, given the important role vision plays in food selection,” he says. “For our ancestors, sight was the primary sense used to search for food at a distance, because senses such as smell have a limited range in humans.”

Mr. Carlson and his colleagues asked 20 people to view different pictures of different food and non-food items. According to the report of this media, the electrical activity of each person’s brain was checked through an electroencephalogram.

“Some of the electrical activity data was used to train machine learning models with a unique model for each participant,” says Dr. Their brains likely responded similarly to different photos, but the researchers wanted the models to be adjusted for each individual. Carlson

Various experiments and practical exercises were conducted to evaluate the cognitive response elicited by food images. The researchers discovered that distinct brain signatures, representing unique patterns of brain activity associated with specific cognitive processes or states, appeared between 108 and 116 milliseconds after exposure to the food images.

“It takes 40 to 60 milliseconds for information to travel from the retina to the cortex, so it’s not much longer than that before we see this response,” says Mr. Carlson.

Gaining a deeper understanding of the visual dimensions of how people perceive food has the potential to guide them toward healthier food choices, the researchers said.

Click for more trending news