{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,11]],"date-time":"2026-02-11T09:37:44Z","timestamp":1770802664647,"version":"3.50.0"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]],"date-time":"2026-02-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1770076800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Understanding how the brain adapts to repeated food-related cues provides insight into attentional and motivational mechanisms that influence eating behaviour. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that food cues, particularly high-calorie stimuli, elicit sustained neural responses with repeated exposure. The present study extends this line of inquiry by examining the oscillatory dynamics of within-session habituation using time-frequency analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) data from 24 healthy adult participants. Repeated presentations of the same high-calorie, low-calorie, and non-food images were shown, and changes in power across the delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma bands were analysed using cluster-based permutation testing. The results revealed a significant habituation effect for the non-food image within the theta band at frontal scalp electrode clusters between 110\u2013330 ms, characterised by a progressive reduction in power over time. In contrast, both high and low-calorie food cues maintained more stable oscillatory activity, indicating sustained attentional engagement. Participant-level analyses further suggested that changes in attentional engagement followed a graded pattern rather than clear categorical differences across stimulus types. These findings suggest that neural habituation is modulated by stimulus salience, with high-calorie food images resisting adaptation through persistent theta-band synchronisation at frontal scalp electrodes. Integrating these oscillatory results with prior time-domain evidence highlights a multi-stage attentional process: an early sensory filtering phase reflected in parietal ERPs and a sustained regulatory phase indexed by theta-band activity recorded at frontal scalp electrodes. This study provides novel evidence that time-frequency analysis captures complementary aspects of attentional adaptation that are not visible in traditional ERP measures, offering a richer understanding of how the brain maintains attention to appetitive visual stimuli.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s26031001","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]],"date-time":"2026-02-03T13:58:49Z","timestamp":1770127129000},"page":"1001","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Oscillatory Correlates of Habituation: EEG Evidence of Sustained Frontal Theta Activity to Food Cues"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"26","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2176-3336","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Aruna","family":"Duraisingam","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computing, Architecture, and Emerging Technologies, Ravensbourne University London, London SE10 0EW, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0164-8218","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Daniele","family":"Soria","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Research Group, School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NZ, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5296-8396","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ramaswamy","family":"Palaniappan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Research Group, School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NZ, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"384","DOI":"10.1037\/a0015074","article-title":"Habituation as a determinant of human food intake","volume":"116","author":"Epstein","year":"2009","journal-title":"Psychol. 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