The effect of hunger and state preferences on the neural processing of food images.

饥饿感和状态偏好对食物图像神经加工的影响

Denise Moerel, Cecilia Chenh, Sophie Bowman, Thomas Carlson (2026) The effect of hunger and state preferences on the neural processing of food images. Cortex (IF: 3.3) 2 区 199 145-164

Abstract

Visual information plays a key role in guiding food-related decisions. While previous studies have shown that features such as calories and naturalness are encoded by the brain, upon simply seeing the stimuli, it remains unclear how this encoding is shaped by the observer's current state. In this study, we explore the effect of 1) hunger state, 2) task relevance, and 3) current individual preference on the processing of visual food information. Participants (N = 23) underwent two EEG sessions: one after fasting overnight and another after eating normally. During each session, participants did two separate tasks, one where the stimuli were task-relevant and one where attention was distracted away. We used multivariate analysis methods to assess the impact of hunger on the representation of food-related features, and to determine the time-course of information related to food flavour, personal appeal, and arousal, across both tasks. Results showed that information about edibility (food vs non-food object), food identity (e.g., hamburger vs pizza), flavour profile, or personal appeal and arousal was not influenced by the hunger manipulation. Flavour was represented regardless of attentive state, whereas personal appeal and arousal information emerged later and were only observed when the food was task-relevant. We found that food appeal and arousal encoding were more closely aligned with behavioural ratings within rather than between sessions, suggesting the nature of the encoding was driven by current state. The study provides insights into how personal preferences and physiological states influence the representation of food information in the brain.Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

视觉信息在引导食物相关决策中起着关键作用。虽然以往研究表明，大脑在仅仅看到刺激物时就会编码卡路里和天然性等特征，但这种编码如何受到观察者当前状态的影响仍然不清楚。本研究探讨了以下因素对视觉食物信息处理的影响：1）饥饿状态；2）任务相关性；3）当前个人偏好。参与者（N = 23）接受了两次脑电图（EEG）测试：一次是在隔夜禁食后，另一次是在正常饮食后。在每次测试中，参与者完成两项独立的任务，一项任务的刺激物与任务相关，另一项任务的注意力则会被分散。我们采用多元分析方法评估了饥饿对食物相关特征表征的影响，并确定了在两项任务中与食物口味、个人吸引力和唤醒度相关的信息的时间进程。结果表明，关于食物可食用性（食物与非食物物体）、食物种类（例如，汉堡包与披萨）、风味特征或个人吸引力和唤醒度的信息不受饥饿感的影响。风味信息无论注意力状态如何均有表征，而个人吸引力和唤醒度信息则出现较晚，且仅在食物与任务相关时才能观察到。我们发现，食物吸引力和唤醒度的编码与同一实验阶段内的行为评级更为一致，而非不同实验阶段之间，这表明编码的性质受当前状态驱动。本研究深入探讨了个人偏好和生理状态如何影响大脑中食物信息的表征。版权所有 © 2026 作者。由 Elsevier Ltd. 出版。保留所有权利。

Links

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41980304
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2026.03.015

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