Learning from taste: Brain connectivity, adaptation, and behavioral correlates

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  • Sadler, Jennifer Rose
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Nutrition
Abstract
  • Food choices are the foundation of eating habits and contribute to weight status and health. Food choices are informed by expectations about a food’s reward value learned through appetitive food conditioning. This dissertation investigated brain connectivity during conditioning via food reward and punishment and brain adaptation to repeated exposure to food cue and tastes. An overarching goal was to identify how individual differences in behavioral characteristics relate to brain response and learning outcomes. Data from healthy, young adults (n=90) characterized brain network structure during completion of a response-dependent, taste motivated instrumental conditioning task, called the appetitive Probabilistic Selection Task (PST). We examined behavioral, psychological, and physiological correlates of learning outcomes measured by the PST. During the PST, brain networks organization was similar across conditions in the task (choice, sweet/bitter taste), with key differences in connectivity of prefrontal regions between sweet and bitter tastes. During choice, increased within-network connectivity of a network containing memory and learning regions correlated with increased behavioral sensitivity to food punishment. Negative correlates of learning included external eating and body mass index (BMI) and in women, trait sensitivity to punishment was positively associated with behavioral sensitivity to food reward and punishment. Data from healthy adolescents (n=154) examined how brain response to food cue/taste adapted with repeated exposure. Response in motivation and attention regions increased following repeated cue presentations, and response in taste responsiveness areas increased following repeated taste administration. Additionally, individual differences in the magnitude of change was correlated with age/sex adjusted BMI. Together, results identify individual differences in brain response and behavioral outcomes of food conditioning. Findings suggest high BMI and high susceptibility to cued-overeating are related to decreased ability to make choices based on food’s motivational value, and that higher BMI is associated with greater attention/motivation for food cues with repeated exposure. Together, these outcomes place individuals at elevated risk of making misinformed food decisions and misallocating effort to attain food reward. Identifying individual differences in food conditioning can better predict eating behavior and obesity risk in healthy populations and support eating behavior interventions focused on decreasing food cue-responsiveness and increasing eating outcomes sensitivity.
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Advisor
  • Burger, Kyle S
  • Gordon-Larsen, Penny
  • Ward, Dianne S
  • Small, Dana M
  • Cohen, Jessica R
Degree
  • Doctor of Philosophy
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2020
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