Spetter Maartje S, Higgs Suzanne, Dolmans Dirk, Thomas Jason M, Reniers Renate L E P, Rotshtein Pia, Rutters Femke
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT, Birmingham, UK.
School of Psychology, Aston University, B4 7ET, Birmingham, UK.
Physiol Behav. 2020 Oct 15;225:113085. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.113085. Epub 2020 Jul 18.
We investigated the neural correlates of working memory guided attentional selection of food versus non-food stimuli in young women. Participants were thirty-two women, aged 20.6y (± 0.5) who were presented with a cue (food or non-food item) to hold in working memory. Subsequently, they had to search for a target in a 2-item display where target and distractor stimuli were each flanked by a picture of a food or a non-food item. The behavioural data showed that attention is particularly efficiently drawn to food stimuli when thinking about food. Using fMRI, we found that holding a non-food versus food stimulus in working memory was associated with increased activity in occipital gyrus, fusiform, inferior and superior frontal gyrus. In the posterior cingulum, retrosplenial cortex, a food item that re-appeared in the search array when it was held in memory led to a reduced response, compared to when it did not re-appear. The reverse effect was found for non-food stimuli. The extent of the reappearance effect correlated with the attentional capture of food as measured behaviourally. In conclusion, these results suggest that holding food in mind may bias attention because thinking of food facilitated neuronal responses to sensory input related to food stimuli and because holding food-related information in mind is less taxing on memory.
我们研究了年轻女性在工作记忆引导下对食物与非食物刺激进行注意选择的神经关联。参与者为32名年龄在20.6岁（±0.5）的女性，她们会看到一个线索（食物或非食物物品）并将其保存在工作记忆中。随后，她们必须在一个包含两个物品的展示中寻找目标，其中目标和干扰刺激两侧分别有一张食物或非食物物品的图片。行为数据表明，当思考食物时，注意力会特别有效地被吸引到食物刺激上。使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI），我们发现，在工作记忆中保持非食物刺激与食物刺激相比，枕叶、梭状回、额下回和额上回的活动增加有关。在扣带回后部、压后皮质，当一个食物项目被保存在记忆中并在搜索阵列中再次出现时，与它没有再次出现相比，其反应会减弱。对于非食物刺激则发现了相反的效果。重新出现效应的程度与行为测量的食物注意力捕获相关。总之，这些结果表明，记住食物可能会使注意力产生偏差，因为思考食物会促进神经元对与食物刺激相关的感觉输入的反应，并且因为记住与食物相关的信息对记忆的负担较小。
