title: The Pavlovian craver: Neural and experiential correlates of single trial naturalistic food conditioning in humans.
abstract: Present-day environments are replete with tempting foods and the current obesity pandemic speaks to humans' inability to adjust to this. Pavlovian processes may be fundamental to such hedonic overeating. However, a lack of naturalistic Pavlovian paradigms in humans makes translational research difficult and important parameters such as implicitness and acquisition speed are unknown. Here we present a novel naturalistic conditioning task: an image of a neutral object was conditioned to marzipan taste in a single trial procedure by asking the participant to eat the 'object' (made from marzipan). Relative to control objects, results demonstrate robust pre- to post-conditioning changes of both subjective ratings and early as well as late event related brain potentials, suggesting contributions of implicit (attentional) and explicit (motivational) processes. Naturalistic single-trial taste-appetitive conditioning is potent in humans and shapes attentional and motivational neural processes that might challenge self-regulation during exposure to tempting foods. Thus, appetitive conditioning processes might contribute to overweight and obesity.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria. Electronic address: jens.blechert@sbg.ac.at.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Blechert
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Testa
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Georgii
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Klimesch
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: F H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Wilhelm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001070:Appetitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D057566:Self Report; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Appetitive conditioning; Classical conditioning; Event related potentials; Food craving; Implicit processes; Late positive potential; Naturalistic conditioning; Pavlovian conditioning; Visual Attention