An open dataset of human electroencephalographic and behavioural responses to food images

Investigating the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying food choices has the potential to advance our understanding of eating behaviour and inform health-targeted interventions and policy. Large, publicly available neural and behavioural datasets can enable new discoveries and targeted hypothesis tests, yet no such datasets are currently available. We present the FOODEEG dataset containing electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to a diverse array of food images, as well as behavioural measures of food cognition (food categorisation task, food go/no-go task, and food choice task responses), collected from 117 participants. We also provide normative ratings for the food image stimuli with respect to 22 food attributes, including nutritive, hedonic and taste properties, familiarity, and elicited emotions. Our dataset also includes questionnaire-based measures of participants food motivations, dietary styles, and general motivational tendencies. In the validation analyses, we demonstrate that early food-evoked EEG responses in our dataset are consistent with observations in previous work. The FOODEEG dataset will be valuable for accelerating research into the neural substrates of visual food processing, dietary decisions, and individual differences.