Reversing Food Craving Preference Through Multisensory Exposure

TL;DR

This study investigates how multisensory food exposure can reverse individual food craving preferences, highlighting neural correlates and the importance of subjective craving valuation for behavior change.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multisensory exposure method considering individual preferences and identifies neural markers associated with craving reversal.

Findings

Multisensory exposure increased craving for disliked foods.

Neural activity in parietal N200 and P300 correlates with craving reversal.

Subjective craving ratings are crucial for predicting willingness to pay.

Abstract

Experiencing food craving is nearly ubiquitous and has several negative pathological impacts, but effective intervention strategies to control or reverse craving remain limited. Food cue-reactivity tasks are often used to study food craving but most paradigms ignore individual food preferences, which could confound the findings. We explored the possibility of reversing food craving preference using psychophysical tasks on human participants considering their individual food preferences in a multisensory food exposure set-up. Participants were grouped into Positive Control (PC), Negative Control (NC), and Neutral Control (NEC) based on their preference for sweet and savory items. Participants reported their momentary craving of the displayed food stimuli through desire scale and bidding scale (willingness to pay) pre and post multisensory exposure. Participants were exposed to food items they either liked or disliked. Our results asserted the effect of the multisensory food exposure showing statistically significant increase in food craving for negative control post-exposure to disliked food items. Using computational model and statistical methods we also show that desire for food does not necessarily translate to willingness to pay every time and instantaneous subjective valuation of food craving is an important parameter for subsequent action. Our results further demonstrate the role of parietal N200 and centro-parietal P300 in reversing craving preference.