Elevating Food Perceptions Through Luxury Verbal Cues: An Eye-Tracking and Electrodermal Activity Experiment

Many brands, including food brands, draw on connotations of luxury to elevate the favorability of consumer perceptions. This is often undertaken using cues in marketing communications; however, no research has examined the psychophysiological effect of luxury cues on consumer attention. Evidently, this study is the first experiment to use eye-tracking and skin conductance analysis to investigate how luxury cues in marketing communications can influence consumer perceptions of a food product. Our findings demonstrate that the use of luxury verbal cues can significantly enhance the attention to hedonic processing and elevate food brand perceptions. Specifically, consumers pay greater attention to the imagery of marketing communications when exposed to luxury verbal cues, which, in turn, enhance arousal and positive brand evaluations. Our research provides valuable theoretical and managerial implications for food brands using communications such as content marketing and advertising to build favorable brand connotations and elevate brand positioning.

The early adolescent brain on music: analysis of functional dynamics reveals engagement of orbitofrontal cortex reward system

Music listening plays a pivotal role for children and adolescents, yet surprisingly few neuroimaging studies have studied the underlying functional dynamics. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan 17 preadolescents aged 10-11 years old while listening to music. We subsequently tracked the occurrence of functional brain networks over time by using a recent method that detects recurrent BOLD phase-locking states: the Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis (LEiDA). In particular, we compared the probabilities of occurrence and switching profiles of different patterns of BOLD phase-locking between music and no music. Moreover, we used an adapted version of the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) to measure the music reward sensitivity of the participants. Our results showed significantly increased occurrence of a BOLD phase-locking pattern during music listening compared to no music, characterized by a phase-shift in the BOLD signals of the medial orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices – a brain subsystem associated to reward processing – from the rest of the brain. Moreover, we observed a significantly higher probability of switching to this pattern while listening to music. We also found a positive correlation between the individual musical reward sensitivity and the tendency to switch to this reward state during music. Our findings highlight the involvement of a brain subsystem involved in hedonic processing during music listening in the early adolescent brain. These results offer novel insight into the neural underpinnings of musical reward in early adolescence and may help us to understand the importance of music at this delicate age.

Positive Valence System Dysregulation in Psychosis

Motivational and hedonic impairments cut across diagnostic categories, are core aspects of psychopathology, and may be crucial for understanding pathways to development and maintenance of psychopathology. Given the pervasive nature of motivational and hedonic deficits across psychopathology forms, the Research Domain Criteria initiative includes a “positive valence” systems domain that outlines constructs critical for understanding motivational and hedonic impairments in psychopathology. These constructs include initial responsiveness to reward, reward anticipation or expectancy, incentive or reinforcement learning, effort valuation, and action selection. The chapter reviews behavioral and neuroimaging studies providing evidence for construct impairments in in individuals with psychosis versus individuals with depressive pathology. Evidence suggests there are meaningful differences in reward-related and hedonic deficits associated with psychosis versus depression. These differences have implications for understanding the differential etiology of these forms of psychopathology and the ways treatment development may need to proceed for each domain. The literature suggests that individuals with depressive pathology experience impairments of in-the-moment hedonics or “liking,” particularly among those who experience anhedonia. Given that hedonic experience is the basis in many ways for all other aspects of motivational function, such deficits may propagate forward and contribute to impairments in other constructs dependent on hedonic responses. In contrast, individuals with psychosis have relatively intact in-the-moment hedonic processing, instead experiencing impairments in process aspects that translate reward to action selection. More specifically, individuals with schizophrenia exhibit altered reward prediction and associated striatal and prefrontal activation, impaired reward learning, and impaired reward-modulated action selection.

Reduced mu opioid receptor availability in schizophrenia revealed with [11C]-carfentanil positron emission tomographic Imaging

Negative symptoms, such as amotivation and anhedonia, are a major cause of functional impairment in schizophrenia. There are currently no licensed treatments for negative symptoms, highlighting the need to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying them. Mu-opioid receptors (MOR) in the striatum play a key role in hedonic processing and reward function and are reduced post-mortem in schizophrenia. However, it is unknown if mu-opioid receptor availability is altered in-vivo or related to negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Using [11 C]-carfentanil positron emission tomography (PET) scans in 19 schizophrenia patients and 20 age-matched healthy controls, here we show a significantly lower MOR availability in patients with schizophrenia in the striatum (Cohen’s d = 0.7), and the hedonic network. In addition, we report a marked global increase in inter-regional covariance of MOR availability in schizophrenia, largely due to increased cortical-subcortical covariance.

Hedonic processing in humans is mediated by an opioidergic mechanism in a mesocorticolimbic system

It has been hypothesized that the pleasure of a reward in humans is mediated by an opioidergic system involving the hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. Importantly, enjoying the pleasure of a reward is distinct from incentive salience induced by cues predicting the reward. We investigated this issue using a within subject, pharmacological challenge design with the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone and fMRI. Our data show that blocking opioid receptors reduced pleasure associated with viewing erotic pictures more than viewing symbols of reward such as money. This was paralleled by a reduction of activation in the ventral striatum, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, hypothalamus and medial prefrontal cortex. Crucially, the naloxone induced activation decrease was observed at reward delivery, but not during reward anticipation, indicating that blocking opioid receptors decreases the pleasure of rewards in humans.Editorial note: This article has been through an editorial process in which the authors decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review. The Reviewing Editor's assessment is that all the issues have been addressed (<xref ref-type="decision-letter" rid="SA1">see decision letter</xref>).