Memory for food: properties and function

International audienceEP Köster's latest work has focused on the role of sensory memory in food perception. He pioneered this theme by proposing original experimental paradigms, allowing exploration of both explicit recognition of food-based stimuli and implicit mechanisms underlying the act of eating. This work challenges the traditional view of memory as reactivation of previous experiences. The results show that food memory is tuned at detecting novelty and change, rather than at recognizing previously encountered foods. In other words, memory for food is mainly involved in safeguarding our intake and not so much in the recollection of previous experiences