A network of interconnected brain regions, including orbitofrontal, ventral striatal, amygdala, and midbrain areas, has been widely implicated in a number of aspects of food reward. However, in humans, sensitivity to reward can vary significantly from one person to the next. Individuals high in this trait experience more frequent and intense food cravings and are more likely to be overweight or develop eating disorders associated with excessive food intake. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we report that individual variation in trait reward sensitivity (as measured by the Behavioral Activation Scale) is highly correlated with activation to images of appetizing foods (e.g., chocolate cake, pizza) in a fronto-striatal-amygdala-midbrain network. Our findings demonstrate that there is considerable personality-linked variability in the neural response to food cues in healthy participants and provide important insight into the neurobiological factors underlying vulnerability to certain eating problems (e.g., hyperphagic obesity).

The anterior insula has been implicated in coding disgust from facial, pictorial and olfactory cues, and in the experience of this emotion. Personality research has shown considerable variation in individuals' trait propensity to experience disgust ('disgust sensitivity'). Our study explored the neural expression of this trait, and demonstrates that individual variation in disgust sensitivity is significantly correlated with participants' ventroanterior insular response to viewing pictures of disgusting, but not appetizing or bland, foods. Similar correlations were also seen in the pallidum and orofacial regions of motor and somatosensory cortices. Our results also accord with comparative research showing an anterior to posterior gradient in the rat pallidum reflecting increased 'liking' of foods [Smith, K. S. and Berridge, K. C. (2005) J. Neurosci., 25, 849-8637].

Prior research has focused primarily on the mental health consequences of abortion; little is known about mental health before abortion. In this study, the psychiatric history of women who have had an abortion is investigated. 325 Women who recently had an abortion were compared with 1902 women from the population-based Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS-2). Lifetime prevalence estimates of various mental disorders were measured using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview 3.0. Compared to the reference sample, women in the abortion sample were three times more likely to report a history of any mental disorder (OR = 3.06, 95% CI = 2.36-3.98). The highest odds were found for conduct disorder (OR = 6.97, 95% CI = 4.41-11.01) and drug dependence (OR = 4.96, 95% CI = 2.55-9.66). Similar results were found for lifetime-minus-last-year prevalence estimates and for women who had first-time abortions only. The results support the notion that psychiatric history may explain associations that have been found between abortion and mental health. Psychiatric history should therefore be taken into account when investigating the mental health consequences of abortion.

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Negative abortion experiences may, at least partially, stem from prior or underlying mental health problems.

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Previous research indicates that a considerable number of women with an unintended pregnancy experience difficulty deciding about continuing or terminating the pregnancy. We examined the decision-making processes of women who experienced high decision difficulty and women who experienced little decision difficulty, to gain insight in the factors that contribute to experienced decision difficulty. Sixty-nine women who had an abortion, and 40 women who had decided to continue their unintended pregnancy, participated in qualitative interviews. We found that women's decision processes varied on 11 relevant criteria. The decision-making processes of women who experienced little decision difficulty differed from that of women who experienced high decision difficulty, but the decision-making processes of women who carried their pregnancy to term and the high decision difficulty abortion group were strikingly similar. Implications of our findings for future research and for professional care for women who are in need of support during decision-making are discussed.