ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2016
Heterogeneity in brain reactivity to pleasant and food cues: evidence of sign-tracking in humans.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Personalizing smoking cessation pharmacotherapy using neuroaffective reactivity profiles: A randomized controlled trial.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Trial
- Hunger Training as a Self-regulation Strategy in a Comprehensive Weight Loss Program for Breast Cancer Prevention: A Randomized Feasibility Study.Cancer prevention research (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2022Trial
- Reproducible human reward imaging phenotypes exhibit differential sensitivity to dopamine D2 receptor antagonism.Nature communications · 2026Article
- What a stimulus predicts, not what it depicts, determines striatal reward signals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Test-retest reliability of the gaze index for sign-tracking and goal-tracking.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Brain signature of food and alcohol stimuli processing: a comparative EEG study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- When cues take the wheel: cue-control across alcohol use disorder, binge-eating disorder, gambling disorder, and internet gaming disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- A shared ensemble in the prelimbic cortex links impulsivity and anxiety-like behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Sign- vs. goal-tracking is associated with greater adiposity and altered functional connectivity in response to a naturalistic food paradigm.Physiology & behavior · 2025Article
- Profiles of Neuroaffective Responding to Natural Reward-Predicting Cues and Alcohol Images in Alcohol Use Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Approach.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Implementations of sign- and goal-tracking behavior in humans: A scoping review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- EEG might be better left alone, but ERPs must be attended to: Optimizing the late positive potential preprocessing pipeline.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- Improved data quality and statistical power of trial-level event-related potentials with Bayesian random-shift Gaussian processes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The role of sex on sign-tracking acquisition and outcome devaluation sensitivity in Long Evans rats.Behavioural brain research · 2023Article
- Individual differences in late positive potential amplitude and theta power predict cue-induced eating.Addiction neuroscience · 2023Article
- Food reinforcement architecture: A framework for impulsive and compulsive overeating and food abuse.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2023Review
- Article
- Neuroaffective reactivity profiles are associated with vulnerability to e-cigarette use.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2023Article
- Towards neuromarkers for tailored smoking cessation treatments.Addiction neuroscience · 2023Article
- Electrophysiological normative responses to emotional, neutral, and cigarette-related images.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Aberrant brain reward responses to food-related cues are an implied characteristic of human obesity; yet, findings are inconsistent. To explain these inconsistencies, we aimed to uncover endophenotypes associated with heterogeneity in attributing incentive salience to food cues in the context of other emotionally salient cues; a phenomenon described as sign- vs goal tracking in preclinical models. Data from 64 lean and 88 obese adults who were 35.5 ± 9.4 years old and predominantly women (79%) were analyzed. Participants viewed food-related, pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images while recording electroencephalograph. Late positive potentials were used to assess incentive salience attributed to the visual stimuli. Eating and affective traits were also assessed. Findings demonstrated that obese individuals, in general, do not demonstrate aberrant brain reward responses to food-related cues. As hypothesized, latent profile analysis of the late positive potential uncovered two distinct groups. 'Sign-trackers' showed greater responses to food-related cues (P < 0.001) but lower responses to pleasant stimuli (P < 0.001) compared with 'goal-trackers'. There were proportionally more obese than lean 'sign-trackers' (P = 0.03). Obese 'sign-trackers' reported significantly higher levels of emotional eating and food craving (P < 0.001). By examining the heterogeneity in brain reactivity to various emotional stimuli, this translational study highlights the need to consider important neurobehavioral endophenotypes of obesity.
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