Odour-imagery ability is linked to food craving, intake, and adiposity change in humans.

It is well-known that food-cue reactivity (FCR) is positively associated with body mass index (BMI) and weight change, but the mechanisms underlying these relationships are incompletely understood. One prominent theory of craving posits that the elaboration of a desired substance through sensory imagery intensifies cravings, thereby promoting consumption. Olfaction is integral to food perception, yet the ability to imagine odours varies widely.

Odor imagery but not perception drives risk for food cue reactivity and increased adiposity.

Mental imagery has been proposed to play a critical role in the amplification of cravings. Here we tested whether olfactory imagery drives food cue reactivity strength to promote adiposity in 45 healthy individuals. We measured odor perception, odor imagery ability, and food cue reactivity using self-report, perceptual testing, and neuroimaging.

Olfactory decoding is positively associated with ad libitum food intake in sated humans.

The role of olfaction in eating behavior and body weight regulation is controversial. Here we reanalyzed data from a previous functional magnetic resonance imaging study to test whether central olfactory coding is associated with hunger/satiety state, food intake, and change in body weight over one year in healthy human adults. Since odor quality and category are coded across distributed neural patterns that are not discernible with traditional univariate analyses, we used multi-voxel pattern analyses to decode patterns of brain activation to food versus nonfood odors.

Fat and Carbohydrate Interact to Potentiate Food Reward in Healthy Weight but Not in Overweight or Obesity.

Prior work suggests that actual, but not estimated, energy density drives the reinforcing value of food and that energy from fat and carbohydrate can interact to potentiate reward. Here we sought to replicate these findings in an American sample and to determine if the effects are influenced by body mass index (BMI). Thirty participants with healthy weight (HW; BMI 21.

Development of MacroPics: A novel food picture set to dissociate the effects of carbohydrate and fat on eating behaviors.

Emerging evidence suggests that fat and carbohydrate interact to potentiate the reward value of food (DiFeliceantonio et al., 2018). The primary goal of the current study was to develop a novel picture set to facilitate research into the effects of macronutrient composition on food choice and eating behavior.

Identification of a brain fingerprint for overweight and obesity.

The brain plays a central role in the pathophysiology of overweight and obesity. Connectome-based Predictive Modeling (CPM) is a newly developed, data-driven approach that exploits whole-brain functional connectivity to predict a behavior or trait that varies across individuals. We used CPM to determine whether brain "fingerprints" evoked during milkshake consumption could be isolated for common measures of adiposity in 67 adults with overweight and obesity.

No evidence for an association between obesity and milkshake liking.

Background: Prevailing models of obesity posit that hedonic signals override homeostatic mechanisms to promote overeating in today's food environment. What researchers mean by "hedonic" varies considerably, but most frequently refers to an aggregate of appetitive events including incentive salience, motivation, reinforcement, and perceived pleasantness. Here we define hedonic as orosensory pleasure experienced during eating and set out to test whether there is a relationship between adiposity and the perceived pleasure of a palatable and energy-dense milkshake.