Baoqi GONG¹ (), Haoxuan YAO², Yipeng LI¹, Wanru LI¹, Shiming TANG¹²³, Pinglei BAO¹³⁴; ¹Peking‐Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Beijing 100871, China, ²Peking University School of Life Sciences, Beijing 100871, China, ³IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Peking University, Beijing 100871, China, ⁴School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Research in both humans and non-human primates has revealed that the inferotemporal (IT) cortex contains specialized areas responsive to vital object categories like faces, bodies, and natural scenes, which are essential for survival and daily activities. Recent studies revealed a new category-specific area, the food area, by analyzing 7T fMRI data when subjects viewed the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD). However, these findings are somewhat constrained as they are based on a narrow range of datasets and exclusively human participants. Our study addressed these constraints by employing human fMRI to measure brain responses to two kinds of food stimuli: Chinese (e.g., Baozi) and Western foods (e.g., Pizza), juxtaposed with non-food stimuli in a blocked design format. This method identified specific subregions in IT cortex showing a preference for food images. Interestingly, there was a stronger activation for Chinese foods, reflecting the dominant dietary exposure of the subjects. In expanding our research to non-human subjects, we scanned two macaques with two stimulus sets, each containing food and non-food images. One set came from NSD as natural stimuli, and the other comprised single objects. Both sets, despite their different low-level properties, indicated a consistent food-responsive network in the IT cortex with three distinct patches from posterior to anterior. Complementary to this, widefield calcium imaging conducted on the macaques identified a food-preferred area in the anterior IT cortex. Intriguingly, unlike human subjects, the area showed a marked preference for fruit images. These outcomes not only affirm the existence of a dedicated food area within the IT cortex across different species but also underscore the significant impact of visual experience in the formation and specialization of these food areas.

Acknowledgements: National Science and Technology Innovation 2030-Major Project 2022ZD0204803, Natural Science Foundation of China Grant NSFC 32271081,32230043 to P. B. Natural Science Foundation of China Grant NSFC32200857, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant 2023M740125, 2022T150021, 2021M700004 to J.Y.