Inhibition of anticipatory salivation and craving in response to food stimuli.

Two experiments were done to study inhibition of cue-dependent salivation and craving responses. Experiment 1 suggests that total prevention of tasting during cue exposure inhibits salivation responses to chocolate cues. On the other hand, salivation was triggered by chocolate cues after tasting a very small amount of chocolate, indicating a very robust and rapid learning of conditioned salivation responses. However, prevention of tasting during cue exposure did not affect craving, suggesting that this method cannot decrease craving or that craving is affected at different rate than salivation. Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that tasting irrelevant food during repeated exposure to chocolate cues would inhibit anticipatory salivation and craving responses to these cues. No support for this hypothesis was observed.