Reward responses to food stimuli across sensory modalities: hunger modulates wanting differentially for pictures and odors

As a need state, hunger alters how we evaluate the rewarding perceptual properties of food. Whether this modulation targets specific components of food reward and to what extent it depends on the sensory modality through which food cues are presented remains understudied. This study examined whether hunger selectively modulates wanting versus liking for food, across visual and olfactory cues. Participants (N = 43) rated food, non-food, and disgusting stimuli during fasted and sated sessions, across the dimensions of liking and wanting. Our results show that hunger resulted in stronger increases in wanting for food cues than in liking. Contrary to expectations, this hunger-induced increase in wanting was more pronounced for food pictures than for food odors. Liking and wanting ratings for non-food cues remained unaffected regardless of state, though exploratory analyses suggested heightened wanting for aversive odors during hunger. Overall, our findings demonstrate that hunger selectively modulates motivational rather than hedonic components of reward in a content- and modality-specific manner. Taken together, our study highlights the need to consider both reward components and sensory modality when examining food reward. Systematic manipulation of these factors could enhance our understanding of multisensory reward integration in relation to food intake and provide insights that could inform interventions for maladaptive eating behaviors.