Project description
Investigating cognitive processes fundamental to food behaviours
Current research has missed that humans shape their food behaviour in early life. The rise of food-related health disorders demands efficient evidence-based interventions to promote healthy food practices during infancy. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) F.E.E.D. your mind project will shed light on the cognitive processes underlying food learning in infancy. It will use robust methods from neuroscience and psychology to investigate the ontogeny and neuro-cognitive bases of the capacity to recognise foods, examine the social component of food learning processes, and investigate the longitudinal relationship between the processes that are central to food recognition and learning in infancy and food behaviours in later childhood.
Objective
The rise of food-related health disorders calls for action. Food behaviors take shape early in life and track well into adulthood. Thus, efficient evidence-based interventions promoting healthy food practices in early life are key to tackling these challenges. The aim of the project is to shed light on the cognitive processes underlying food learning in infancy and provide empirical bases to design such interventions.
The project adopts a novel perspective on food learning. Current research has overlooked that our modern food environment strongly differs from the environment in which our ancestors lived. In fact, in most cultures today, decisions about food are made during a trip to the grocery store, where we might ask ourselves: Are these canned tomatoes healthy? but certainly not: Are they edible or toxic?. As a result, scholars missed that a critical step in learning what to eat over the course of ontogeny, is determining which entities in the world are wholesome foods and which ones are harmful items to eschew.
The project will fill this research gap using robust methods from neuroscience and psychology. First, WP1 will investigate the ontogeny and neuro-cognitive bases of the capacity to recognize food objects, testing whether this capacity emerges when infants transition to solid food, guiding their attention to food-relevant inputs, such as social information about edibility. Second, WP2 will examine the social component of food learning processes, once infants are able to recognize food objects, testing whether infants show a negativity bias when learning about food from others, giving more weight to negative than to positive information. Finally, building on WP1 and WP2 results, WP3 will investigate the longitudinal relationship between the processes underlying food recognition and learning in infancy and food behaviors later in childhood, paving a way towards designing efficient evidence-based interventions promoting healthy eating in early life.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
75006 Paris
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.