Abstract
ObjectiveHealth goal priming has been shown to stimulate healthy food choices by activating an individual's weight-control goal. The present study combined fMRI with a novel virtual reality food choice task to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms of health goal priming. Previous research has suggested that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) play a role in the incorporation of health considerations into the food choice process. Responses may be more representative for those found in real life when assessed in an environment similar to the actual choice environment. Therefore, the first aim of the study was to explore if a novel virtual reality food choice task is sufficiently sensitive to detect basic valuation processes in food choice. The second aim was to examine whether increased activation in the dlPFC drives the effects of health goal priming. MethodsFifty-six female participants performed an fMRI food choice task embedded in a virtual supermarket environment. They chose between perceived healthy and unhealthy products in a health prime, hedonic prime, and non-food control condition, while activation in brain areas involved in self-control and valuation (vmPFC, dlPFC) was assessed. ResultsThere were no differences in relative preference for perceived healthy products over unhealthy products between the conditions. There were also no main effects of prime condition on brain activation in the vmPFC and dPFC during food choice. Across conditions, activation in the vmPFC correlated with the tastiness of the chosen product during food choice. ConclusionsAlthough the study does not provide support for health goal priming triggering neural self-control mechanisms, results did show that virtual reality has potential for a more realistic fMRI food choice paradigm.
Highlights
While undergoing fMRI, participants performed a virtual super market food choice task (i.e., NeuroShop Choice Task) in which they chose between perceived healthy (PH) and perceived unhealthy (PU) food products
The potential of virtual reality was coined for fMRI research as it may help to suppress the actual situation in favor of the virtual situation
As a first exploration of the potential of virtual reality for studying food-related neuroimaging we investigated if the tastiness and healthi ness ratings of products relate to the same areas as was found in previous fMRI studies not employing virtual reality
Summary
A growing number of people are overweight or obese (Ng et al, 2014), and this puts them at risk for a range of serious health conse quences, like diabetes (Kahn, Hull, & Utzschneider, 2006) and high blood pressure (Kotsis et al, 2005). Activates an individual’s long-term goal of healthy eating and control ling one’s weight, which can affect cognition and behavior to be more in line with those long-term goals (Papies, 2016) Research in both laboratory and real-world settings has shown that health goal priming can stimulate healthier food choices (Boland, Connell, & Vallen, 2013; Brunner & Siegrist, 2012; Papies & Hamstra, 2010; Papies et al, 2014; Papies & Veling, 2013; Van der Laan, Papies, Hooge, & Smeets, 2017), especially among participants with a strong dieting goal (for a meta-analysis, see Buckland, Er, Redpath, & Beaulieu, 2018). Our second hypothesis was that exposure to a health goal prime would result in more healthy food choices than a neutral or hedonic prime
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