Wednesday 1 January 1997

Chewing-gum flavor affects measures of global complexity of multichannel EEG

Neuropsychobiology 1997;35:46–50
(DOI: 10.1159/000119329)

Yagyu T., Wackermann J., Kinoshita T., Hirota T., Kochi K., Kondakor I., Koenig T., Lehmann D.

The KEY Institute for Brain-Mind Research, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zurich, Switzerland

Department of Neuropsychiatry, Kansai Medical University, Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan

Neuroscience Technology Research, Inc.. Prague, Czech Republic

Abstract

Global complexity of spontaneous brain electric activity was studied before and after chewing gum without flavor and with 2 different flavors. One-minute, 19-channel, eyes-closed electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded from 20 healthy males before and after using 3 types of chewing gum: regular gum containing sugar and aromatic additives, gum containing 200 mg theanine (a constituent of Japanese green tea), and gum base (no sugar, no aromatic additives); each was chewed for 5 min in randomized sequence. Brain electric activity was assessed through Global Omega (Ω)-Complexity and Global Dimensional Complexity (GDC), quantitative measures of complexity of the trajectory of EEG map series in state space; their differences from pre-chewing data were compared across gum-chewing conditions. Friedman Anova (p < 0.043) showed that effects on Ω-Complexity differed significantly between conditions and differences were maximal between gum base and theanine gum. No differences were found using GDC. Global Omega-Complexity appears to be a sensitive measure for subtle, central effects of chewing gum with and without flavor.

http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/119329

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