Publications by authors named "Laura N van der Laan"

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was limited adoption of contact-tracing apps (CTAs). Adoption was particularly low among vulnerable people (eg, people with a low socioeconomic position or of older age), while this part of the population tends to have lesser access to information and communication technology and is more vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus.

Objective: This study aims to understand the cause of this lagged adoption of CTAs in order to facilitate adoption and find indications to make public health apps more accessible and reduce health disparities.

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Self-control is of vital importance for human wellbeing. Hare et al. (2009) were among the first to provide empirical evidence on the neural correlates of self-control.

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Background: Serious games for the training of prevention behaviors have been widely recognized as potentially valuable tools for adolescents and young adults across a variety of risk behaviors. However, the role of agency as a distinguishing factor from traditional health interventions has seldom been isolated and grounded in the persuasive health communication theory. Fear appeals have different effects on intentions to perform prevention behaviors depending on the immediacy of the consequences.

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People making food choices are often exposed to different cues that can activate relevant goals that influence the choice outcome. Hedonic goals are frequently primed by advertising while health policy enlists primes that activate health goals in the moment of food decision-making - e.g.

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Background: Virtual reality (VR) has gained popularity in daily life, and VR food cues seem to elicit food cravings, similar to real food cues. However, little is known about the impact of VR food cues on actual food intake.

Objective: In real life (RL), exposure to food cues in a situation in which the desire to eat food interferes with the completion of a food-related task reduces the subsequent food intake (ie, the pre-exposure effect).

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Background: Virtual supermarkets offer a practical and affordable setting to test the efficacy of different pricing and nudging strategies before they are implemented in the real world. Despite the advantages of using virtual supermarkets for this purpose, conducting studies in online settings is challenging with regard to recruitment and retention of sufficient and suitable participants.

Objective: To describe cost, time, and retention with regard to participants recruited using various strategies and potential sociodemographic differences between participants recruited via different strategies.

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Since habits formed during childhood are predictive of adult behaviour, children form an important target group when it comes to improving healthy and environmentally friendly food consumption. To explore the potential of immersive virtual reality (VR) in this respect, we conducted a semi-structured interview study ( = 22) among children aged 6-13 years. This study consisted of two parts: (1) a VR experience and (2) a semi-structured interview to investigate (1) to what extent children are able to recall and understand information about the impact of food products on their health and the environment when provided to them as pop-ups in a VR supermarket; (2) what rational and emotional processes are triggered by this information; and (3) what children's expectations about the real-life application and impact of the pop-ups are, and why.

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Childhood obesity is a rising problem caused in part by unhealthy food choices. Food choices are based on a neural value signal encoded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and self-control involves modulation of this signal by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). We determined the effects of development, body mass (BMI Cole score) and body mass history on the neural correlates of healthy food choice in children.

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The use of neuroimaging tools, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging, in nutritional research has increased substantially over the past 2 decades. Neuroimaging is a research tool with great potential impact on the field of nutrition, but to achieve that potential, appropriate use of techniques and interpretation of neuroimaging results is necessary. In this article, we present guidelines for good methodological practice in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies and flag specific limitations in the hope of helping researchers to make the most of neuroimaging tools and avoid potential pitfalls.

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This article explores neural and self-report responses to gender congruence in product-voice combinations in commercials. An fMRI study was carried out in which participants (n = 30) were presented with gender-targeted pictures of characteristic male or female products accompanied by either gender congruent or incongruent voices. The findings show that attitudes are more positive toward commercials with gender congruent than with gender incongruent product-voice combinations.

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The easy availability of food has caused a shift from eating for survival to hedonic eating. Women, compared to men, have shown to respond differently to food cues in the environment on a behavioral and a neural level, in particular to energy rich (compared to low energy) foods. It has been demonstrated that the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is the only region exhibiting greater activation for high vs.

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Childhood obesity is a rising problem worldwide mainly caused by overconsumption, which is driven by food choices. In adults, food choices are based on a value signal encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). This signal is modulated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which is involved in self-control.

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Background: Food cues are omnipresent and may trigger overconsumption. In the past 2 decades, the prevalence of childhood obesity has increased dramatically. Because children's brains are still developing, especially in areas important for inhibition, children may be more susceptible than adults to tempting food cues.

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Objective: Several lab and field experiments have shown that goal priming interventions can be highly effective in promoting healthy food choices. Less is known, however, about the mechanisms by which goal priming affects food choice. This experiment tested the hypothesis that goal priming affects food choices through changes in visual attention.

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Restrained eaters do not eat less than their unrestrained counterparts. Proposed underlying mechanisms are that restrained eaters are more reward sensitive and that they have worse inhibitory control. Although fMRI studies assessed these mechanisms, it is unknown how brain anatomy relates to dietary restraint.

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Impulsivity is a personality trait that is linked to unhealthy eating and overweight. A few studies assessed how impulsivity relates to neural responses to anticipating and tasting food, but it is unknown how impulsivity relates to neural responses during food choice. Although impulsivity is a multi-faceted construct, it is unknown whether impulsivity subtypes have different underlying neural mechanisms.

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The regulation of food intake has gained much research interest because of the current obesity epidemic. For research purposes, food images are a good and convenient alternative for real food because many dietary decisions are made based on the sight of foods. Food pictures are assumed to elicit anticipatory responses similar to real foods because of learned associations between visual food characteristics and post-ingestive consequences.

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We are continuously exposed to food and during the day we make many food choices. These choices play an important role in the regulation of food intake and thereby in weight management. Therefore, it is important to obtain more insight into the mechanisms that underlie these choices.

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Food choices constitute a classic self-control dilemma involving the trade-off between immediate eating enjoyment and the long term goal of being slim and healthy, especially for weight-concerned women. For them, decision-making concerning high (HE) and low energy (LE) snacks differs when it comes to the need for self-control. In line, our first study aim was to investigate which brain regions are activated during food choices during HE compared to LE energy snacks in weight-concerned women.

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Food cues are omnipresent and may enhance overconsumption. In the last two decades the prevalence of childhood obesity has increased dramatically all over the world, largely due to overconsumption. Understanding children's neural responses to food may help to develop better interventions for preventing or reducing overconsumption.

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Despite their intentions, weight-concerned individuals generally fail to control their eating behavior. However, it is unknown whether this failure is due to a lack of effortful self-control, or to not experiencing an internal conflict between weight goals and food temptations. The present study used fMRI, eye tracking and reaction times to assess the degree of conflict experienced by weight-concerned women during food choices that posed either a self-control dilemma (i.

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The brain governs food intake behaviour by integrating many different internal and external state and trait-related signals. Understanding how the decisions to start and to stop eating are made is crucial to our understanding of (maladaptive patterns of) eating behaviour. Here, we aim to (1) review the current state of the field of 'nutritional neuroscience' with a focus on the interplay between food-induced brain responses and eating behaviour and (2) highlight research needs and techniques that could be used to address these.

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Neuro-imaging holds great potential for predicting choice behavior from brain responses. In this study we used both traditional mass-univariate and state-of-the-art multivariate pattern analysis to establish which brain regions respond to preferred packages and to what extent neural activation patterns can predict realistic low-involvement consumer choices. More specifically, this was assessed in the context of package-induced binary food choices.

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This comment further extends the argument put forward in a recent short communication by Booth and Nouwen (2010) that satiety claims have limited value for weight control and are misleading for consumers. Consumers need to be made aware of the bigger picture of weight control rather than fed with the too simplistic promise that a special satiety-enhancing food can effectively improve their weight control.

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