Last year a study of >2.4 million kids born in Sweden looked at Tylenol exposure and autism

At first, it seemed like there was a small association.

But then they compared siblings where one was exposed in utero and the other wasn’t and found no increased risk jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Thank you, Ian!

Our findings highlight the insula's crucial role in flavour integration, explaining why smells are so vital to our perception of taste. So next time you enjoy a meal, appreciate the complex interplay happening in your brain! 🧠🍽️ #Neuroskyence #FlavourPerception 10/10

This implies that the insula encodes a property that doesn't change throughout the session, such as identity. Meanwhile, the convergence in the OFC suggests that it likely encodes something that dynamically changes throughout the session, e.g. subjective value. 9/10

In fact, we developed a method to examine runwise representational drift of flavours in the insula, and we saw a slight divergence between similar and different flavours in the insula over the course of a session, but we could see the opposite effect in the OFC. 8/10

We're the first to show this direct shared encoding between retronasal odours and tastes in humans at the neural level, challenging the current consensus that this integration only happens further downstream in the OFC. 7/10

Why does this matter? Imagine reducing sugar or salt in foods without sacrificing flavour! If certain aromas can trick your brain into perceiving sweetness or savouriness, we could design healthier foods that still taste great. #HealthInnovation 6/10

This integration isn't just anywhere in the insula. We pinpointed it to specific subregions – the dysgranular and agranular anterior insula. Meanwhile, only tastes could be decoded from the activation patterns in the granular subregion. 5/10

What was most interesting, however was that a decoder trained on the tastes and tested on the odours (and vice versa) also performed significantly above chance. This showed that that retronasal odours (aromas) elicit similar activations to their associated tastes in the insula. 4/10

We then used mass-univariate GLM to identify a taste activation map. Within this map, a decoder was able to separate the sweet and savoury tastes. Interestingly, it could also separate 'sweet' and 'savoury' odours. 3/10

We first familiarised participants with sweet & savoury flavours (taste + aroma). They then attended two fMRI sessions where they received just the taste (without smell) or just the smell (without taste). 2/10