Our research group is delighted to announce that our latest study on how the visual appearance of food shapes individual likes and dislikes has been published in the international journal PLOS ONE.

In this work, we investigated why some individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) like—or dislike—sunny-side-up eggs by analyzing the images’ visual characteristics in a systematic way. Fifty photos of sunny-side-up eggs were shown to participants with ASD and to neurotypical controls (typical development, TD). By combining Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) with decision-tree analysis, we successfully pinpointed the visual boundaries that separate “liked” from “disliked” eggs for each group.

The findings highlight distinct visual cues that govern food preferences in ASD and open a new avenue for tailoring dietary interventions to individual perceptual sensitivities.

Terada, K., Imaizumi, T., Ueda, K., Nishikawa, N., Yoshida, H., Taki, Y., Fujii, S., Li, L., Komori, M., Kato, K. & Kumazaki, H. (2025). Visual feature analysis on selective appetite in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. PLOS One, 20(6), e0325416. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325416