So much variety, so much to eat : The neuro-cognitive bases of food categorization in infancy

Food is fundamental to life. Yet, detecting members of the food category raises a substantial cognitive challenge as different foods do not have any apparent common visual features. Moreover, what is deemed edible greatly depends on the cultural context. While the neuro-cognitive bases of food category representations are well documented in adults, their early ontogenetic origins remain unknown. The current study investigated the emergence of food categorization abilities in infants’ brains, using the fast periodic visual stimulation paradigm (FPVS) coupled with electroencephalography (EEG). In FPVS paradigms, images from a target category are periodically inserted into a rapid stream of base images from other categories. If the brain treats the target images as a distinct category relative to the base images, a distinct EEG response appears at the frequency of presentation of the target images. In our study, French-speaking adults, 12- and 6-month-old infants (n = 25 per age group) were presented with target food stimuli inserted into sequences of base stimuli from various non-food categories (e.g., man-made objects, plants). Results show that, similarly to adults, 12-month-old infants distinguished images of food from those of other categories, with stronger neural responses in hungrier individuals. In contrast, 6-month-old infants showed no detectable categorization response for food images. The current study is the first to investigate the developmental course of food categorization in the human brain and showed that, by their first birthday, infants already group perceptually diverse foods into a single category