Food texture: A part of the food properties that ignorable for maintaining cognitive function?

Food texture is a response of the tactile sense to physical stimuli that result from contact between some part in the oral cavity and the food. Both animal and human studies indicated that mastication influenced cognitive functioning, hippocampus, a region in central nervous system that vital for spatial memory and learning. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent progress of the association between food texture, mastication and cognitive function. The integrity of masticatory is a response from efferent fibres to motoric fibres. Masticatory dysfunction is associated with the hippocampal morphological impairments and the hippocampus-dependent spatial memory deficits through degeneratif process, especially in elderly. The study in this field is still making an interesting subject. Hard diet can maintained cognitif function on learning and memory ability elderly. In addtion, long term ingestion of soft diet may inluence the learning and memory through hippocampal neurogenesis