J. Bradley C. Cherry

Brain Responses to Food Logos in Obese and Healthy Weight Children

OBJECTIVE To evaluate brain activation in response to common food and nonfood logos in healthy weight and obese children. STUDY DESIGN Ten healthy weight children (mean body mass index in the 50th percentile) and 10 obese children (mean body mass index in the 97.9th percentile) completed self-report measures of self-control. They then underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing food and nonfood logos. RESULTS Compared with the healthy weight children, obese children showed significantly less brain activation to food logos in the bilateral middle/inferior prefrontal cortex, an area involved in cognitive control. CONCLUSION When shown food logos, obese children showed significantly less brain activation than the healthy weight children in regions associated with cognitive control. This provides initial neuroimaging evidence that obese children may be more vulnerable to the effects of food advertising.

Robust relation between temporal discounting rates and body mass

When given the choice between

Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making

100 today and

Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising

110 in 1 week, certain people are more likely to choose the immediate, yet smaller reward. The present study examined the relations between temporal discounting rate and body mass while accounting for important demographic variables, depressive symptoms, and behavioral inhibition and approach. After having their heights and weights measured, 100 healthy adults completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, and the Behavioral Inhibition Scale/Behavioral Approach Scale. Overweight and obese participants exhibited higher temporal discounting rates than underweight and healthy weight participants. Temporal discounting rates decreased as the magnitude of the delayed reward increased, even when other variables known to impact temporal discounting rate (i.e., age, education level, and annual household income) were used as covariates. A higher body mass was strongly related to choosing a more immediate monetary reward. Additional research is needed to determine whether consideration-of-future-consequences interventions, or perhaps cognitive control interventions, could be effective in obesity intervention or prevention programs.

Healthy eating decisions require efficient dietary self-control in children: A mouse-tracking food decision study

For consumers today, the perceived ethicality of a food’s production method can be as important a purchasing consideration as its price. Still, few studies have examined how, neurofunctionally, consumers are making ethical, food-related decisions. We examined how consumers’ ethical concern about a food’s production method may relate to how, neurofunctionally, they make decisions whether to purchase that food. Forty-six participants completed a measure of the extent to which they took ethical concern into consideration when making food-related decisions. They then underwent a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while performing a food-related decision-making (FRDM) task. During this task, they made 56 decisions whether to purchase a food based on either its price (i.e., high or low, the “price condition”) or production method (i.e., with or without the use of cages, the “production method condition”), but not both. For 23 randomly selected participants, we performed an exploratory, whole-brain correlation between ethical concern and differential neurofunctional activity in the price and production method conditions. Ethical concern correlated negatively and significantly with differential neurofunctional activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). For the remaining 23 participants, we performed a confirmatory, region-of-interest (ROI) correlation between the same variables, using an 8-mm3 volume situated in the left dlPFC. Again, the variables correlated negatively and significantly. This suggests, when making ethical, food-related decisions, the more consumers take ethical concern into consideration, the less they may rely on neurofunctional activity in the left dlPFC, possibly because making these decisions is more routine for them, and therefore a more perfunctory process requiring fewer cognitive resources.

Apples or candy? Internal and external influences on children's food choices

Consumers prefer to pay low prices and increase animal welfare; however consumers are typically forced to make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Campaign advertising (i.e., advertising used during the 2008 vote on Proposition 2 in California) may affect how consumers make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Neuroimaging data was used to determine the effects of brain activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) on choices making a tradeoff between price and animal welfare and responsiveness to campaign advertising. Results indicated that activation in the dlPFC was greater when making choices that forced a tradeoff between price and animal welfare, compared to choices that varied only by price or animal welfare. Furthermore, greater activation differences in right dlPFC between choices that forced a tradeoff and choices that did not, indicated greater responsiveness to campaign advertising.

Neural Activations Associated with Decision-time and Choice in a Milk Labeling Experiment

Learning how to make healthy eating decisions, (i.e., resisting unhealthy foods and consuming healthy foods), enhances physical development and reduces health risks in children. Although healthy eating decisions are known to be challenging for children, the mechanisms of childrens food choice processes are not fully understood. The present study recorded mouse movement trajectories while eighteen children aged 8-13 years were choosing between eating and rejecting foods. Children were inclined to choose to eat rather than to reject foods, and preferred unhealthy foods over healthy foods, implying that rejecting unhealthy foods could be a demanding choice. When children rejected unhealthy foods, mouse trajectories were characterized by large curvature toward an eating choice in the beginning, late decision shifting time toward a rejecting choice, and slowed response times. These results suggested that children exercised greater cognitive efforts with longer decision times to resist unhealthy foods, providing evidence that children require dietary self-control to make healthy eating-decisions by resisting the temptation of unhealthy foods. Developmentally, older children attempted to exercise greater cognitive efforts for consuming healthy foods than younger children, suggesting that development of dietary self-control contributes to healthy eating-decisions. The study also documents that healthy weight children with higher BMIs were more likely to choose to reject healthy foods. Overall, findings have important implications for how children make healthy eating choices and the role of dietary self-control in eating decisions.

The child brain computes and utilizes internalized maternal choices

The goal of this concise narrative review is to examine the current literature regarding endogenous and exogenous influences on youth food choices. Specifically, we discuss internal factors such as interoception (self-awareness) of pain and hunger, and neural mechanisms (neurofunctional aspects) of food motivation. We also explore external factors such as early life feeding experiences (including parenting), social influences (peers), and food marketing (advertising). We conclude with a discussion of the overlap of these realms and future directions for the field of pediatric food decision science.

Corrigendum: The child brain computes and utilizes internalized maternal choices

The authors incorporate brain activation data in an analysis of decision time and choices for milk labeled as produced with growth hormone or cloning technologies, or labeled as conventional milk. Non-hypothetical choices and decision time are correlated with blood oxygenation level-dependent extractions in brain regions previously found to be involved in valuation. The significance of the activations related to price and production technology differs in models of decision time and choice. More areas influence the time it takes to make a decision. The final decision appears to be most correlated with localized areas in the medial prefrontal cortex, with a higher correlation when the choice is about growth hormones than cloning technology.

An fMRI investigation of consumer choice regarding controversial food technologies

As children grow, they gradually learn how to make decisions independently. However, decisions like choosing healthy but less-tasty foods can be challenging for children whose self-regulation and executive cognitive functions are still maturing. We propose a computational decision-making process in which children estimate their mothers choices for them as well as their individual food preferences. By employing functional magnetic resonance imaging during real food choices, we find that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) encodes childrens own preferences and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) encodes the projected moms choices for them at the time of childrens choice. Also, the left dlPFC region shows an inhibitory functional connectivity with the vmPFC at the time of childrens own choice. Our study suggests that in part, children utilize their perceived caregivers choices when making choices for themselves, which may serve as an external regulator of decision-making, leading to optimal healthy decisions.