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| Poster #403 Don Tucker Finalist: Metabolic modulation of appetitive odor processing in food reward valuation |
| Androula Savva1,2, Marc Guitart-Masip3,4,5, Ata Ghaderi1, Cynthia M. Bulik2,6,7, Janina Seubert1 1Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology Division, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, --, Sweden 2Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Centre for Eating Disorders Innovation, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, --, Sweden 3Aging Research Center, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, --, Sweden 4Center for Psychiatry Research, Region Stockholm, Stockholm, --, Sweden 5Center for Cognitive and Computational Neuropsychiatry (CCNP), Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, --, Sweden 6Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States 7Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States |
Hunger is a powerful motivational state that enhances both the hedonic value of food and the drive to pursue food rewards. In this state, sensory cues, particularly odors, play a key role in triggering anticipatory reward responses, motivating individuals to seek and consume food. Unlike visual or auditory cues, odors are uniquely effective in evoking memories of food and eliciting physiological responses that prepare the body for food intake. However, the specific mechanisms by which food odors invigorate reward-driven actions, and how these effects vary by metabolic state, remain poorly understood. In this study, we present a novel experimental paradigm that separates invigorating effects of food stimuli on reward-seeking behavior, across two sensory modalities. In a food incentive delay paradigm, participants completed a reaction time task in which they could earn points that were exchanged for snacks at the end of the study. Participants (N=48) attended two experimental sessions after an overnight fast and completed the study once while hungry and once after consuming a standardized ad libitum breakfast. Prior to each trial (rewarded, non-rewarded), participants were presented with either an odor or a picture (food, non-food) and were instructed to press a button as soon as a symbol appeared on the screen. Our results indicate that hunger selectively improves reward-seeking performance when the task is preceded by a food odor, but not a food picture. Additionally, food and non-food stimuli elicit no differentiable invigorating effects on reward-seeking behavior in a satiated state. Taken together, these findings highlight the distinct role of odors in driving reward-seeking behavior in hunger and open up unique avenues of investigation into populations with maladaptive eating behaviors. |