All the Pringle ladies: Neural and behavioral responses to high‐calorie food rewards in young adult women

Reward processing is vital for learning and survival, and can be indexed using the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event‐related potential (ERP) component that is larger for rewards than losses. Prior work suggests that heightened motivation to obtain reward, as well as greater reward value, is associated with an enhanced RewP. However, the extent to which internal and external factors modulate neural responses to rewards, and whether such neural responses motivate reward‐seeking behavior, remains unclear. The present study investigated whether the degree to which a reward is salient to an individual's current motivational state modulates the RewP, and whether the RewP predicts motivated behaviors, in a sample of 133 women. To elicit the RewP, participants completed a forced‐choice food reward guessing task. Data were also collected on food‐related behaviors (i.e., type of food chosen, consumption of the food reward) and motivational salience factors (i.e., self‐reported hunger, time since last meal, and subjective “liking” of food reward). Results showed that hungrier participants displayed an enhanced RewP compared to less hungry individuals. Further, self‐reported snack liking interacted with RewP magnitude to predict behavior, such that when participants reported low levels of snack liking, those with a smaller RewP were more likely to consume their snacks than those with a larger RewP. Our data suggest that food‐related motivational state may increase neural sensitivity to food reward in young women, and that neural markers of reward sensitivity might interact with subjective reward liking to predict real‐world eating behavior. We investigated whether the degree to which a reward is salient to one's motivational state modulates neural sensitivity to food reward, as indexed by the Reward Positivity (RewP). Our findings suggest that neural response to food reward is associated with motivational state (i.e., hunger) and interacts with subjective food liking to predict real‐world behavior (i.e., consuming snack food).