Department of Decision Neuroscience and Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition, Potsdam-Rehbrücke, 14558 Germany
Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin Neuroscience Research Center, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
J Neurosci. 2022 Aug 10;42(32):6276-6284. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2405-21.2022. Epub 2022 Jul 6.
As humans are social beings, human behavior and cognition are fundamentally shaped by information provided by peers, making human subjective value for rewards prone to be manipulated by perceived social information. Even subtle nonverbal social information, such as others' eye gazes, can influence value assignment, such as food value. In this study, we investigate the neural underpinnings of how gaze cues modify participants' food value (both genders) by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging. During the gaze-cuing task, food items were repeatedly presented either while others looked at them or while they were ignored by others. We determined participants' food values by assessing their willingness to pay before and after a standard gaze-cuing training. Results revealed that participants were willing to pay significantly more for food items that were attended to by others compared with the unattended to food items. Neural data showed that differences in subjective values between the two conditions were accompanied by enhanced activity in the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate after food items were attended to. Furthermore, the functional connectivity between the caudate and the angular gyrus precisely predicted the individual differences in the preference shift. Our results unveil the key neural mechanism underlying the influence of social cues on the subjective value of food and highlight the crucial role of social context in shaping subjective value for food rewards in human. We investigated how social information like others' gaze toward foods affects individuals' food value. We found that individuals more often choose food items that were looked at by another person compared with food items that were ignored. Using neuroimaging, we showed that this increased value for attended to food items was associated with higher brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate. Furthermore, functional connectivity between the caudate and the angular gyrus was associated with individual differences in values for food items that were attended to by others versus being ignored. These findings provide novel insights into how the brain integrates social information into food value and could suggest possible interventions like using gaze cuing to promote healthier food choices.
作为社会生物，人类的行为和认知从根本上受到同伴提供的信息的塑造，这使得人类对奖励的主观价值容易受到感知到的社会信息的影响。即使是微妙的非言语社会信息，如他人的目光注视，也会影响价值分配，如食物价值。在这项研究中，我们通过功能磁共振成像来研究注视线索如何改变参与者对食物价值的主观判断（包括男性和女性）的神经基础。在注视线索任务中，食物项目要么在他人注视时呈现，要么在他人忽略时呈现。我们通过在标准的注视线索训练前后评估参与者的支付意愿来确定他们的食物价值。结果表明，与未被注视的食物相比，参与者更愿意为他人注视的食物支付更多的钱。神经数据显示，在两种条件下，主观价值的差异伴随着被注视的食物项目后额下回、颞中回和尾状核的活动增强。此外，尾状核和角回之间的功能连接精确地预测了个体在偏好转移上的差异。我们的研究结果揭示了社会线索对食物主观价值影响的关键神经机制，并强调了社会背景在塑造人类对食物奖励的主观价值方面的重要作用。我们研究了他人对食物的注视等社会信息如何影响个体的食物价值。我们发现，与被忽视的食物相比，个体更常选择被另一个人注视的食物。通过神经影像学，我们表明，这种对被注视食物的更高价值与额下回、颞中回和尾状核的大脑活动增加有关。此外，尾状核和角回之间的功能连接与他人注视与被忽视的食物项目的个体差异有关。这些发现为大脑如何将社会信息整合到食物价值中提供了新的见解，并可能暗示了一些干预措施，如使用注视线索来促进更健康的食物选择。
