Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to unveil how consumption of certain foods and other basic rewards are processed within the human brain, but traditional fMRI has not been widely used to investigate neural stimulation of consuming solid foods, because of potential safety hazards and poor imaging quality. Novel scanning methods could alleviate this.
Resting state fMRI scans allow for administration of a stimulus before scanning, and literature has shown resting state networks reflect functional connectivity between brain regions. Resting state scans show functional connectivity by correlating active neurons across the brain.