Findings published in Psychophysiology suggest that some people have increased "neural sensitivity" to tasty content.
“Over 62,000 photos are shared worldwide each day under the hashtag #foodporn,” study authors wrote.
“These images glamorise the highly palatable, high‐calorie foods that are believed to promote the maladaptive eating patterns contributing to today’s obesity epidemic. A common assumption is that obese individuals have difficulty controlling food intake partly because food‐related stimuli elicit irresistible cravings by abnormally activating their brain’s appetitive systems.”
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Recruiting 49 individuals, scientists studied their electrical brain activity as they viewed a series of images, including but not limited to food and sexually-arousing pictures.
Chocolate M&Ms were then offered during the task soon after participants viewed images containing food. They could either eat it or pass on it.
In the brain, there is a neural marker called Late Positive Potential (LPP), which can measure how closely someone is paying attention to images.
By using this neural marker, researchers split the volunteers into two groups: one where LLP spiked over food-related imagery, the second where LLP rose off the back of erotic imagery.
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As expected, individuals with greater brain activity when #foodporn was shown were also twice as likely to take the M&Ms.
“By contributing to the understanding of the biological basis underlying individual differences in vulnerability to cue‐induced eating, our findings represent a step toward identifying new targets for personalised weight control interventions aimed at regulating the intense motivation to eat that many individuals experience in the presence of cues associated with highly palatable foods,” the researchers add.
