ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1681999
This article is part of the Research TopicMindful and Intuitive Eating: Insights and InterventionsView all 3 articles
Pleasantness Emotions and Neural Activity Induced by the Multimodal Crispiness of Monaka Ice Cream
Provisionally accepted
Takayuki Yamamoto1*
Ryo Tanaka1
Takanori Kochiyama2Yukiko Nota2Hitomi Tsuchiya1Masato Kawamoto1
Wataru Sato3- 1Morinaga Seika Kabushiki Kaisha Kenkyujo, Yokohama, Japan
- 2ATR-Promotions Inc, Kyoto, Japan
- 3Psychological Process Research Team, Guardian Robot Project, RIKEN, Kyoto, Japan
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Monaka ice cream is a frozen confection consisting of ice cream sandwiched between two wafers. Previous psychological research has reported that monaka ice cream with a relatively low moisture content delivers crispiness and enhances positive emotions during consumption. However, the neural basis of these subjective impressions remains unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms through which crispy monaka ice cream evokes pleasurable emotions. Ten healthy adults participated in the study. The participants first consumed two types of monaka ice cream (low moisture content, approximately 7%; and high moisture content, approximately 12%) in random order. The consumption method involved breaking the ice cream in half by hand and eating three bites per video samples. Subsequently, we performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the participants watched multimodal (visual + auditory) videos of the low-and high-moisture-content monaka ice cream, recalling their eating experiences. During fMRI image acquisition, the participants rated their preference levels on a four-point scale. Preference ratings were higher for low-moisture-content monaka ice cream than for high-moisture-content cream. Lower moisture contents elicited stronger activity in the bilateral auditory cortex and bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) compared with the high moisture content condition. Additionally, preference ratings were positively correlated with vmPFC activity. These findings suggest that the multimodal processing of crispy monaka ice cream involves activity in the auditory cortex and vmPFC, the latter of which contributes to the generation of subjective pleasurable emotions.
Keywords: Monaka ice cream1, functional MRI2, texture perception3, moisture content4, hedonic valuation5, auditory cortex 6, ventromedial prefrontal cortex7
Received: 08 Aug 2025; Accepted: 17 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yamamoto, Tanaka, Kochiyama, Nota, Tsuchiya, Kawamoto and Sato. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Takayuki Yamamoto, t-yamamoto-jc@morinaga.co.jp
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