The effect of hunger and state preferences on the neural processing of food images

Visual information plays a key role in guiding food-related decisions. While previous studies have shown that features such as calories and naturalness are encoded by the visual brain, it remains unclear how this encoding is shaped by the observer’s current state. In this study, we explore the effect of 1) hunger state, 2) current individual preference, and 3) task relevance on the processing of visual food information. Participants underwent two EEG sessions: one after fasting overnight and the another after eating normally. We used multivariate decoding methods to assess the impact of hunger on the decoding of edibility and food identity, and Representational Similarity Analysis to determine the time-course of information related to food flavour, personal appeal, and arousal, both when participants attended to the stimuli and when their attention was distracted away. Results showed that the visual brain quickly encodes information about edibility and food identity, and this was not influenced by whether the participants were in a fasted or sated state. Information about the flavour profile was found to be represented regardless of attentive state. Personal appeal and arousal information emerged later and were only observed when the food was task relevant. Using RSA, we found that food appeal and arousal encoding was more closely aligned with behavioural ratings within rather than between sessions, suggesting the nature of the encoding was driven by current state. In conclusion, the study provides insights into how personal preferences and physiological states influence the representation of food information in the brain.