title: Transcranial magnetic stimulation of medial prefrontal cortex modulates implicit attitudes towards food.
abstract: The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is known to be associated with food representation and monitoring of eating behaviour, but the neural mechanisms underlying attitudes towards food are still unclear. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used in combination with the implicit association test (IAT) to investigate the causal role of mPFC in controlling implicit food evaluation in healthy volunteers. Participants performed an IAT on tasty and tasteless food to test TMS interaction with food evaluation. Moreover, IATs assessing self-related concepts and attitude towards flowers and insects were carried out to control whether TMS could also affect self-representation or, more in general, the cognitive mechanisms required by the IAT. TMS was applied over mPFC; the left parietal cortex (lPA) was also stimulated as control site. Results revealed that mPFC-TMS selectively affected IAT on food, increasing implicit preference for tasty than tasteless food, only in a subgroup of participants who did not show extreme explicit evaluation for tasty and tasteless food. This demonstrates that mPFC has a critical causal role in monitoring food preference and highlights the relevance of considering individual differences in studying food representation and neural mechanisms associated with eating behaviour.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, P.za Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy. Electronic address: giulia.mattavelli@unimib.it.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mattavelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery and Translational Medicine, University of Milano-Bicocca, San Gerardo Hospital, Via Pergolesi, 33, Monza, Italy.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zuglian
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, P.za Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dabroi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, P.za Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Guia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gaslini
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery and Translational Medicine, University of Milano-Bicocca, San Gerardo Hospital, Via Pergolesi, 33, Monza, Italy.
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Clerici
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, P.za Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Costanza
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Papagno
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition; D004032:Diet; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D013649:Taste; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods
keywords: Food evaluation; IAT; Inhibition; Medial prefrontal cortex; TMS