Distributed representational encoding of food attributes in ventral visual cortex

Despite substantial progress in understanding how visual features of food are processed in the brain, it remains unclear how subjective and nutritional properties, such as perceived palatability, caloric content, and health value, are reflected in neural representational structure. Using functional MRI and representational similarity analysis (RSA), we examined how visual, subjective, and nutritional food properties are encoded in ventral visual cortex. Univariate analyses revealed reliable activation differences between high- and low-calorie foods in lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) and fusiform gyrus. RSA further revealed a functional dissociation within the ventral stream: LOTC showed systematic correspondence with both visual and subjective dimensions, whereas fusiform cortex exhibited a selective association with perceived caloric content, with both effects persisting after controlling for visual similarity. These results suggest that food-related dimensions not fully captured by the tested visual models are reflected within visual representational spaces, and that LOTC and fusiform cortex show dissociable representational profiles with respect to subjective and perceived nutritional food dimensions.