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Top-down expectation effects of food labels on motivation

View ORCID ProfileJoost Wegman, Ilke van Loon, View ORCID ProfilePaul A.M. Smeets, View ORCID ProfileRoshan Cools, View ORCID ProfileEsther Aarts
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/199265
Joost Wegman
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
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Ilke van Loon
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
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Paul A.M. Smeets
2Wageningen University and Research, Division of Human Nutrition (Wageningen, Netherlands)
3University Medical Center Utrecht, Image Sciences Institute (Utrecht, Netherlands)
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Roshan Cools
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
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Esther Aarts
1Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
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Abstract

When we buy our food, the information on the package informs us about the properties of the product, such as its taste and healthiness. These beliefs can influence the processing of food rewards and impact decision making beyond objective sensory properties. However, no studies, within or beyond the food domain, have assessed how written information, such as food labels, affect implicit motivation to obtain rewards, even though choices in daily life might be strongly driven by implicit motivational biases. We investigated how written information affects implicit motivation to obtain food rewards. We used food labels (high- and low-calorie), associated with an identical lemonade, to study motivation for food rewards during fMRI. In a joystick task, hungry participants (N=31) were instructed to make fast approach or avoid movements to earn the cued drinks. Behaviorally, we found a general approach bias, which was stronger for the drink that was most preferred during a subsequent choice test, i.e. the one labeled as low-calorie. This behavioral effect was accompanied by increased BOLD signal in the sensorimotor cortex during the response phase of the task for the preferred, low-calorie drink compared with the non-preferred, high-calorie drink. During the anticipation phase, the non-preferred, high-calorie drink label elicited stronger fMRI signal in the right ventral anterior insula, a region associated with aversion and taste intensity, than the preferred, low-calorie label. Together, these data suggest that high-calorie labeling can increase avoidance of drinks and reduce neural activity in brain regions associated with motor control. In conclusion, we show effects of food labeling on fMRI responses during anticipation and subsequent motivated action and on behavior, in the absence of objective taste differences, demonstrating the influence of written information on implicit biases. These findings contribute to our understanding of implicit biases in real-life eating behavior.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 06, 2017.
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Top-down expectation effects of food labels on motivation
Joost Wegman, Ilke van Loon, Paul A.M. Smeets, Roshan Cools, Esther Aarts
bioRxiv 199265; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/199265
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Top-down expectation effects of food labels on motivation
Joost Wegman, Ilke van Loon, Paul A.M. Smeets, Roshan Cools, Esther Aarts
bioRxiv 199265; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/199265

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