8. SDUDY LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH There are several limitations to the undertaken research. First of all there is the gender limitation. The study has been performed only on male participants. As indicated in the literature part, brain responses to food are different according to gender category. Moreover, as Gohier et al. (2013) present, “Differences in emotional processing between men and women have been consistently reported. Healthy women were found to perform better in tasks requiring emotional face categorization (Thayer and Johnsen, 2000). The present study however did not aim to research the differences that appear between genders when it comes to processing the affective stimuli. Consequently, based on previous findings in terms of gender differences, we decided to carry out the study only with male participants in order to keep less variation in the external factors which might have interfered (such as hormonal changes for women participants as – Bruisma and Taren (1999) reveal in their article, p. 1253, etc.). Next studies might therefore be carried out having the gender variable as well and observing, at brain level, the activated parts per each gender when chocolate is ingered, as well as the difference in intensity when stimuli are presented (both visual and taste)in each gender instances. The next shortcoming might consist in the visual stimuli used. Several researches have employed stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), known to reliably alter emotional states. In Huster et al. (2009) it is however stated that this stimuli), have most often been “relevant studies, (using unable to find predicted effects. One reason for such failures might be the inadequate knowledge about the minimum number of stimuli needed for psychometrically stable et al., 2009, p 212) results.” (Huster In the current research, pictures were selected on a subjective rationale in terms of their valence, as happy, sad and neutral, due to the long time interval needed to obtain approval for using the IAPS pictures. Therefore, a new research might try to employ the IAPS stimuli and replicate the conditions of the current study and measure the differences. The present study however did not intend to validate or invalidate the efficiency of the visual stimuli used, but aimed to focus on the impact of the different types of chocolate over brain activations. Further research could examine two forms of collecting the data, such as EEG and fMRI as well as it should include more participants in the study.
8. SDUDY LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH There are several limitations to the undertaken research. First of all there is the gender limitation. The study has been performed only on male participants. As indicated in the literature part, brain responses to food are different according to gender category. Moreover, as Gohier et al. (2013) present, “Differences in emotional processing between men and women have been consistently reported. Healthy women were found to perform better in tasks requiring emotional face categorization (Thayer and Johnsen, 2000). The present study however did not aim to research the differences that appear between genders when it comes to processing the affective stimuli. Consequently, based on previous findings in terms of gender differences, we decided to carry out the study only with male participants in order to keep less variation in the external factors which might have interfered (such as hormonal changes for women participants – as Bruisma and Taren (1999) reveal in their article, p. 1253, etc.). Next studies might therefore be carried out having the gender variable as well and observing, at brain level, the activated parts per each gender when chocolate is ingered, as well as the difference in intensity when stimuli are presented (both visual and taste)in each gender instances. The next shortcoming might consist in the visual stimuli used. Several researches have employed stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), known to reliably alter emotional states. In Huster et al. (2009) it is however stated that “relevant studies, (using this stimuli), have most often been unable to find predicted effects. One reason for such failures might be the inadequate knowledge about the minimum number of stimuli needed for psychometrically stable results.” (Huster et al., 2009, p 212) In the current research, pictures were selected on a subjective rationale in terms of their valence, as happy, sad and neutral, due to the long time interval needed to obtain approval for using the IAPS pictures. Therefore, a new research might try to employ the IAPS stimuli and replicate the conditions of the current study and measure the differences. The present study however did not intend to validate or invalidate the efficiency of the visual stimuli used, but aimed to focus on the impact of the different types of chocolate over brain activations. Further research could examine two forms of collecting the data, such as EEG and fMRI as well as it should include more participants in the study.
Talanga-I.-342848at-.docx