Neural responsivity during soft drink intake, anticipation, and advertisement exposure in habitually consuming youth

Abstract

OBJECTIVE-Although soft drinks are heavily advertised, widely consumed, and have been associated with obesity, little is understood regarding neural responsivity to soft drink intake, anticipated intake, and advertisements. METHODS-FunctionalMRI was used to assess examine neural response to carbonated soft drink intake, anticipated intake and advertisement exposure as well as milkshake intake in 27 adolescents that varied on soft drink consumer status.RESULTS-Intake and anticipated intake of carbonated Coke ® activated regions implicated in gustatory, oral somatosensory, and reward processing, yet high-fat/sugar milkshake intake elicited greater activation in these regions versus Coke intake. Advertisements highlighting the Coke product vs. non-food control advertisements, but not the Coke logo, activated gustatory and visual brain regions. Habitual Coke consumers vs. non-consumers showed greater posterior cingulate responsivity to Coke logo ads, suggesting that the logo is a conditioned cue. Coke consumers exhibited less ventrolateral prefrontal cortex responsivity during anticipated Coke intake relative to non-consumers. CONCLUSIONS-Resultsindicate that soft drinks activate reward and gustatory regions, but are less potent in activating these regions than high-fat/sugar beverages, and imply that habitual soft drink intake promotes hyper-responsivity of regions encoding salience/attention toward brand specific cues and hypo-responsivity of inhibitory regions while anticipating intake.

Frontostriatal and behavioral adaptations to daily sugar-sweetened beverage intake: a randomized controlled trial

“…Because the hypothesis of a specified increased response to an assigned compared with nonassigned beverage logo was not supported, a post hoc examination was performed of both juice stimuli collapsed compared with tasteless solution at baseline and follow-up to test for more general effects of juice consumption. The precuneus, which is located in the parietal lobe, has been shown to increase during exposure to familiar relative to nonfamiliar brands and logos (26,42,43), which is in line with the notion that this region most commonly responds to emotionally salient stimuli independent of valance (44). Burger and Stice (22) observed a similar response pattern, in which the reduced striatal response to palatable food receipt was specified to the consumption of that food, when overeating, in general, was associated with an increased precuneus response to cue-elicited anticipation of palatable food receipt (25).…”

“…Furthermore, objective measures of elevated caloric intake have been shown to increase visual cortex and parietal response during cue-elicited anticipation of a palatable food (25). Last, regular Coke consumers have shown increased visual cortex and parietal response during exposure to Coke advertisements relative to their nonconsuming counterparts independent of weight status (26). These studies showed similar patterns when comparing obese and lean individuals but also suggest that the neurobehavioral patterns precede the accumulation of excess adipose tissue and thus may serve as risk factors for perpetuating intake.…”

Social and environmental enrichment has different effects on ethanol and sucrose consumption in mice

“…Similarly, environmental cues can also influence the consumption of sugary foods (Burger & Stice, 2014;Grenard et al, 2013;Hattersley, Irwin, King, & AllmanFarinelli, 2009;Schmidt, Voorn, Binnekade, Schoffelmeer, & De Vries, 2005). To date, the majority of preclinical research investigating the impact of social and environmental enrichment on ethanol and sucrose consumption has been directed toward ethanol consumption (see Tables 1 and 2).…”

An Exploration of the Role of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage in Promoting Obesity and Health Disparities

“…Observational results showed that habitual added sugar consumption was positively associated with brain reward region responses to food cues in healthy young adults [86••]. Another observational study showed that adolescents who habitually consumed Coke® exhibited greater reward activation and less inhibitory response to the Coke® logo than adolescents who were non-Coke® consumers [87].…”