Neural correlates of top-down guidance of attention to food: An fMRI study

Maartje S Spetter,Suzanne Higgs,Dirk Dolmans,Jason M Thomas,Renate L.E.P Reniers,Pia Rotshtein,Femke Rutters

doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.113085

Maartje S Spetter, Suzanne Higgs + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.113085

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Abstract

We investigated the neural correlates of working memory guided attentional selection of food versus non-food stimuli in young women. Participants were thirty-two women, aged 20.6y (± 0.5) who were presented with a cue (food or non-food item) to hold in working memory. Subsequently, they had to search for a target in a 2-item display where target and distractor stimuli were each flanked by a picture of a food or a non-food item. The behavioural data showed that attention is particularly efficiently drawn to food stimuli when thinking about food. Using fMRI, we found that holding a non-food versus food stimulus in working memory was associated with increased activity in occipital gyrus, fusiform, inferior and superior frontal gyrus. In the posterior cingulum, retrosplenial cortex, a food item that re-appeared in the search array when it was held in memory led to a reduced response, compared to when it did not re-appear. The reverse effect was found for non-food stimuli. The extent of the reappearance effect correlated with the attentional capture of food as measured behaviourally. In conclusion, these results suggest that holding food in mind may bias attention because thinking of food facilitated neuronal responses to sensory input related to food stimuli and because holding food-related information in mind is less taxing on memory.

Highlights

Food images are everywhere, from vending machines, to cafes and billboards
Our behavioural data matched earlier results [5, 6, 13,14,15], namely that a food stimulus held in working memory modulated the deployment of visual attention to a search target, benefitting performance on valid trials
Response to a target was facilitated when it was flanked by a food stimulus that was held in working memory

Summary

Introduction

Food-related stimuli can promote food intake, as well as enhance our hedonic responses to food when it is eaten [1, 2]. This ubiquitous nature of food stimuli may explain why some people find it difficult to avoid overeating in the current food environment. One reason why exposure to food stimuli can stimulate food intake is because food-related stimuli may capture our attention very . There is ample evidence that both “bottom-up” reward driven and “top-down” cognitively driven processes are important in determining the attention we pay to objects in the environment, including food-related stimuli [3,4,5,6]. Soto and colleagues [7, 8] reported that information held in working memory, caused attention to be drawn to similar stimuli in a search array, even when this information was irrelevant to the search

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