Abstract
Previous research has shown that emotions can influence our eating behaviors. Facing an acute stressor or being in a positive mood state are examples of situations that tend to modify appetite. However, the question of how the brain integrates food processing and emotional processing remains largely elusive. Here we designed an emotional priming fMRI task to test if amygdala activity in response to food pictures differs depending on the emotional context. We recruited 58 female participants and administered an emotional priming task, which displayed emotional photographs (depicting negative, neutral and positive situations) followed by either pictures of foods or objects. After priming in each trial, participants rated foods and objects according to how much they liked them. We focused on the contrast “foods > objects” and observed if/how this difference changed according to the emotional context. We also examined the potential effect of abdominal fat (i.e., waist circumference) on the results. We observed a higher difference between liking scores for foods and objects after positive priming than after negative priming. In the left amygdala, activity in the contrast “foods > objects” was higher after neutral and positive priming relative to negative priming. Waist circumference however, did not affect these results. Our results suggest that emotional context alters food processing, both in terms of liking scores and with regards to engagement of the left amygdala. The saliency of food is not a stable attribute, and our findings indicate that emotional context might have an impact on food processing, possibly affecting eating behavior.
Abbreviations
- BMI
- body mass index
- fMRI
- functional magnetic resonance imaging
- MRI
- magnetic resonance imaging
- ROI
- region of interest
- SNc
- substantia nigra pars compacta
- vmPFC
- ventromedial prefrontal cortex
- VTA
- ventral tegmental area