Photo: Stefan ZimmermanOur research
Read more about our research and currently ongoing projects.
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NutriLab – Janina Seubert's Research Group
The nutritional neuroscience group investigates the perceptual experiences associated with eating. We study odor and taste perception during anticipation and consumption of food, their effects on memory and learning as well as emotion and motivation, and their regulation by metabolic feedback.
Part of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience
Photo: Stefan Zimmerman
Photo: Julian HanslmaierCan we acquire tastes for just about anything?
In an interview with the magazine Medicinisk Vetenskap of the Karolinska Institute, Janina Seubert (PI Nutrilab) explains whether we can actually relearn preferences for unhealthy, unsustainable food and create healthy eating habits instead.
Photo: Diana PolekhinaParticipate in our research!
We - and other research groups of the Division of Psychology - are always looking for volunteers who would like to participate in our studies. During our studies you smell odours, taste tastants or look at pictures while we ask you to rate your experience, measure your physiological reactions or even brain activity. Click here to register as a participant in our recruitment system SONA.
More from the Nutrilab
Photo: Khorisantono PA, Fondberg R, Achs L, Friedrich NN, Harenbrock J, Hog L, Persson J, Weber MC, Lundström JN, Seubert J. Dissociable effects of hunger, exposure and sensory overlap on flavour liking. Food Quality and Preference. 2024 Oct 1;119:105211.Publications
Photo: Liftestyle4HealthFunding & Networks
Photo: Natalie PedigoOur research team
Photo: Roman KraftNews & Press
Our research
The main goal of our research is to improve our understanding of the psychological and neural mechanisms of perceptual food experience and learn how they influence our evaluation of different food choices. We hope our work can thereby inspire the development of new interventions that facilitate dietary changes over the course of life and in health and disease.
We are currently pursuing this goal in three different projects:
1. Olfaction as a link between flavour preference and food consumption
Photo: Daria Junger
Human food consumption habits globally pose a significant threat to public health and ecological sustainability. Awareness of the urgency for large-scale global changes has recently been growing substantially; yet, overcoming preferences for familiar food flavors in favor of healthier or more sustainable options remains a major challenge.
The high intrinsic reward value of taste, especially sugar and salt, is generally blamed for the resistance of humans to change their food preferences. There is, however, a fundamental lack of knowledge about the perceptual and emotional mechanisms that link these reward experiences during consumption to the identification of desirable food items before consumption, which ultimately drive our appetite and our dietary decisions.
Photo: ERC
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 947886).
2. Perceptual decision-making about food flavor in the mouth, and its role in food intake regulation
Every time we eat, we evaluate the flavor of the food in our mouth: is it a safe source of energy that should be swallowed, or a potential health threat that should be spit out? Getting this simple decision right is crucial for survival, because it allows us to maintain the balance between sufficient calorie intake on the one hand, and avoidance of accidental poisoning on the other.
Photo: Beth Macdonald
It is well established that we accept foods when their flavor fits a familiar and expected object and reject them when it does not. How we decide whether a flavor belongs to a specific object, however, and which brain processes regulate these decisions, remains to date poorly understood. This project will explore the perceptual and brain processes that allow us to classify olfactory-gustatory percepts in the mouth into stable object categories. Taken together, the knowledge gained from this project will provide us with important insights into the psychological mechanisms that control our perception of the food we eat, and how we use this information to regulate the desire for eating in specific situations in everyday life.
3. Dysregulated Anticipatory Reward Processing in Eating Disorders
Photo: Annie Spratt
Eating disorders have high morbidity and mortality and outcome, especially in anorexia nervosa, is poor, in part due to incomplete understanding of their underlying neurobiology. Neurobiological factors could thwart interventions by affecting the automatic elicitation of reward seeking behavior to food. Odor perception, a key elicitor of responses to foods, could provide novel insights into disturbances of brain reward circuitry in eating disorders. In this collaboration with Cynthia Bulik (Centre for Eating Disorders Innovation, Karolinska Institute) and Ata Ghaderi (Department for Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute) we explore dysregulated food odor processing in binge eating disorder (uncontrolled overeating) and Anorexia nervosa.
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our work by the following research funds:
Swedish Research Council, 1 January 2023 - 31 December 2026
Olfaction as the link between flavor preference formation and retrieval during food consumption
European Research Council, 1 May 2021 - 30 April 2026
Perceptual decision-making about flavor in the mouth and its role in food intake regulation
Swedish Research Council, 1 December 2018 - 31 December 2021
Perceptual learning of olfactory-gustatory binding during food consumption
Swedish Research Council, 1 January 2015 - 31 December 2017
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1 January 2012 - 31 December 2014
Networks
We are part of the KI Lifestyle 4 Health network. In our research project on eating disorders we collaborate with Cynthia Bulik from the Karolinska Institute Centre for Eating Disorders (CEDI) and Ata Ghaderi from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute.
Staff and contact
Group leader
- Janina SeubertPrincipal Researcher | Docent
All members of the group
- Putu Agus KhorisantonoPostdoctoral Researcher
- Anna GerlicherResearch Assistant
- Hilda LindénTeaching Assistant
- Lucile ReyPostdoctoral Researcher
- Andri (Androula) SavvaPhd Student
- Leonie SeidelPhd Student
- Janina SeubertPrincipal Researcher | Docent
News & Press
Episode on taste in podcast Psykologisk forskning
Photo: privat
"Food is on our lips – and in our thoughts – almost all the time. But why do we like certain flavors – are such preferences innate, learned, or both? Is the visual system involved when we eat? Janina Seubert answers questions and talks about her research on how smell, taste, and other senses interact when we eat, on the podcast of the Division of Psychology Psykologisk forskning, the episode is available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Interview on spicy tastes on SVTs morgonstudion
Photo: N/A
The spicy noodle challenged revisited. Janina Seubert visited SVT:s Morgonstudion for a conversation on why we experience the 'spicy noodles' as so spicy.
Interview on odors with Handelsnytt
Photo: handelsnytt
In this Handelsnytt article, Janina Seubert answers questions around odors such as why we stop smelling odors after being exposed to them for some time and what her favorite odor is.
Lecture at the Senior University Stockholm
Photo: senior university stockholm
Why does this taste good or bad? Janina Seubert answers this and other questions about the neuroscience of taste in a lecture for the Senior University Stockholm.
Janina Seubert elected as member of the Young Academy of Sweden
Janina Seubert, Karolina Kauppi. Photo: Gunilla Sonnebring,Stefan Zimmerman
Janina Seubert, researcher in psychology and PI of the Nutrilab, has been elected as member of The Young Academy of Sweden (Sveriges Unga Akademi) together with Karolina Kauppi, researcher in medical biology. The Young Academy of Sweden was established by the Royal Academy of Sweden and is an independent and interdisciplinary organization that gives young researchers a platform to contribute to research policy debate and communicate research to children and young people.