Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases.

ABSTRACT: In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, inducing arousal enhanced attention to subsequent food stimuli. In addition, we manipulated whether participants were hungry or sated to examine how hunger states would influence emotional processing. Previous research reveals that being hungry is associated with increases in norepinephrine, a key neurotransmitter involved in the arousal response. We fou

SUBMITTER: Montagrin A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7781156 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature