BOLD activity during emotion reappraisal positively correlates with dietary self-control success.

Silvia U Maier,Todd A Hare

doi:10.1093/scan/nsaa097

Silvia U Maier, Todd A Hare

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa097

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Abstract

We combined established emotion regulation and dietary choice tasks with fMRI to investigate behavioral and neural associations in self-regulation across the two domains in human participants. We found that increased BOLD activity during the successful reappraisal of positive and negative emotional stimuli was associated with dietary self-control success. This cross-task correlation was present in medial and lateral prefrontal cortex as well as the striatum. In contrast, BOLD activity during the food choice task was not associated with self-reported emotion regulation efficacy. These results suggest that neural processes utilized during the reappraisal of emotional stimuli may also facilitate dietary choices that override palatability in favor of healthfulness. In summary, our findings indicate that the neural systems supporting emotion reappraisal can generalize to other behavioral contexts that require reevaluation of rewarding stimuli and outcomes to promote choices that conform with the current goal.

Highlights

Cognitive strategies and, more recently, the neural mechanisms used to regulate thoughts and actions have been intensely studied in many scientific disciplines
We found that increased BOLD activity during the successful reappraisal of positive and negative emotional stimuli was associated with dietary self-control success
Ample evidence shows that individuals can dampen their cravings by reappraising food stimuli and recent studies show that training to reappraise food stimuli (Boswell et al, 2018) translates into healthier food choices when participants are asked to decide what to eat at the end of the study or right after applying reappraisal strategies on each trial (Hutcherson et al, 2012; Schmidt et al, 2018), it remains unclear whether such regulation skills generalize between task types

Summary

Introduction

More recently, the neural mechanisms used to regulate thoughts and actions have been intensely studied in many scientific disciplines. Ample evidence shows that individuals can dampen their cravings by reappraising food stimuli and recent studies show that training to reappraise food stimuli (Boswell et al, 2018) translates into healthier food choices when participants are asked to decide what to eat at the end of the study or right after applying reappraisal strategies on each trial (Hutcherson et al, 2012; Schmidt et al, 2018), it remains unclear whether such regulation skills generalize between task types. Does the ability to reappraise emotional stimuli correlate with self-control in eating behavior?

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