EEG Brain Heatmap Visualization for Sweet and Sour Tasting

Nutrition Food and drinks are a source of energy and support the function of the human body. Taste is an important factor during consuming food and drink. Assessment processes such as surveys are often used to evaluate taste. Although surveys are often used to assess taste, this method has limitations due to its subjective nature. In an effort to present a more objective and scientific approach Electroencephalography (EEG) offers a promising alternative. EEG can detect brain activity triggered by taste stimuli from food and drinks, thereby enabling more accurate and reliable taste evaluation. This study aims to determine a person's EEG signal pattern when given sour and sweet taste stimuli involving 32 experimental respondents. EEG signals are captured on four channels consisting of T3, T4, CP1, CP2. Within this research, the EEG signal that has been cleaned is decomposed into Alpha and Beta Sub band. Statistical features such as Mean Absolute Value (MAV) and Variance are obtained from the EEG signal and computed for sweet and sour taste classification. Heatmap visualization is applied to show the activity pattern when given sour and sweet stimuli with specific threshold value per person. The result showed that the Beta Sub band using Variance feature showed the most significant different in which the sweet stimuli showed on average of 13,6% above the threshold, while on sour it reached only 5,5%. This shows that sweet tastes trigger stronger brain responses in the analyzed regions compared to sour tastes. These findings are sufficient to demonstrate a relationship between taste perception and EEG signals. as well as informing about differences in EEG patterns when someone is given a sweet and sour taste stimulus.