Caregivers' Attention Toward, and Response to, Their Child's Interoceptive Hunger and Thirst Cues.

People can use their internal state to determine if they are hungry or thirsty. Although the meaning of some interoceptive cues may be innate (e.g., pain), it is possible that others-including those for hunger and thirst-are acquired. There has been little exploration of this idea in humans. Consequently, we conducted a survey among child caregivers to determine if the basic conditions necessary for interoceptive learning were present. Two-hundred and thirty-five caregivers of children aged 1-12 years were asked if they had recently noticed stomach rumbling, hunger-related irritability, and a dry mouth in their child. They were also asked how they would respond. The impact of several moderating variables, especially caregiver beliefs about the causes of hunger, fullness, and thirst, was also explored. Fifteen percent of caregivers had recently noticed stomach rumbling in their child, 28% hunger-related irritability, and 14% a dry mouth. Forty-four percent of caregivers had noticed at least one of these three cues. Noticing hunger cues was significantly moderated by caregiver beliefs about their cause, by child age, and in one case by temporal context (around vs. outside mealtimes). Key caregiver responses were providing the need (e.g., offer food) and/or asking the child if they had a need (e.g., hungry?). Each type of response could potentially support a different form of interoceptive learning. In conclusion, we suggest the necessary conditions for children to learn interoceptive hunger and thirst cues, are present in many caregiver-offspring dyads.

Vulnerability of the Hippocampus to Insults: Links to Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction.

The hippocampus is a critical brain substrate for learning and memory; events that harm the hippocampus can seriously impair mental and behavioral functioning. Hippocampal pathophysiologies have been identified as potential causes and effects of a remarkably diverse array of medical diseases, psychological disorders, and environmental sources of damage. It may be that the hippocampus is more vulnerable than other brain areas to insults that are related to these conditions. One purpose of this review is to assess the vulnerability of the hippocampus to the most prevalent types of insults in multiple biomedical domains (i.e., neuroactive pathogens, neurotoxins, neurological conditions, trauma, aging, neurodegenerative disease, acquired brain injury, mental health conditions, endocrine disorders, developmental disabilities, nutrition) and to evaluate whether these insults affect the hippocampus first and more prominently compared to other brain loci. A second purpose is to consider the role of hippocampal blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown in either causing or worsening the harmful effects of each insult. Recent research suggests that the hippocampal BBB is more fragile compared to other brain areas and may also be more prone to the disruption of the transport mechanisms that act to maintain the internal milieu. Moreover, a compromised BBB could be a factor that is common to many different types of insults. Our analysis indicates that the hippocampus is more vulnerable to insults compared to other parts of the brain, and that developing interventions that protect the hippocampal BBB may help to prevent or ameliorate the harmful effects of many insults on memory and cognition.

Parent-offspring similarity in hunger and thirst sensations.

The internal (i.e., interoceptive) sensations that characterise hunger vary between people, and this may also be the case for thirst, although it has not been so well explored. There are probably both heritable and learning-based causes for this interoceptive variability. Consequently, it would seem plausible that parents and their offspring would have more similar patterns of hunger and thirst than pairs of strangers. We tested this idea, in addition to exploring its potential moderating variables, by studying the similarity of self-reported hunger and thirst sensations in 170 students and their primary caregivers from childhood. Both students and caregivers completed the same online-survey, covering hunger and thirst sensations, beliefs about the causes of hunger and thirst, the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (revised) and demographic data. We find evidence of robust student-caregiver similarity in interoceptive hunger and thirst sensations (medium effect sizes), with these being moderated by caregiver beliefs about the homeostatic nature of each state (medium effect sizes). This suggests a potential role for caregivers in the development of their offspring's interoceptive cues for hunger and for thirst. In addition, thirst, like hunger, appears to be multidimensional, and varies between people. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Evaluating the Presence of Disgust in Animals.

The emotion of disgust in humans is widely considered to represent a continuation of the disease-avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals. The extent to which analogs of human disgust are evident in nonhuman animals, however, remains unclear. The scant research explicitly investigating disgust in animals has predominantly focused on great apes and suggests that disgust might be present in a highly muted form. In this review, we outline the main approaches to disgust. We then briefly discuss disease-avoidance behavior in nonhuman animals, proposing a set of criteria against which evidence for the presence or absence of disgust in animals can be evaluated. The resultant decision tree takes into account other plausible causes of avoidance and aversion when evaluating whether it is likely that the behavior represents disgust. We apply this decision tree to evaluate evidence of disgust-like behavior (e.g., avoidance of carrion and avoidance of feces-contaminated food) in several examples, including nonhuman great apes. Finally, we consider the large disparity between disgust in humans compared to muted disgust in other great apes, examining the possibility that heightened disgust in humans is a relatively recent cultural acquisition.

Human hunger as a memory process.

Hunger refers to (1) the meaning of certain bodily sensations; (2) a mental state of anticipation that food will be good to eat; and (3) an organizing principal, which prioritizes feeding. Definitions (1) and (2) are the focus here, as (3) can be considered their consequent. Definition (1) has been linked to energy-depletion models of hunger, but these are no longer thought viable. Definition (2) has been linked to learning and memory (L&M) models of hunger, but these apply just to palatable foods. Nonetheless, L&M probably forms the basis for hunger generally, as damage to declarative memory can eradicate the experience of hunger. Currently, there is no general L&M model of hunger, little understanding of how physiology intersects with a L&M approach, and no understanding of how Definitions (1) and (2) are related. We present a new L&M model of human hunger. People learn associations between internal (e.g., tummy rumbles) and external cues (e.g., brand names) and food. These associations can be to specific foods (episodic memories) or food-related categories (semantic memories). When a cue is encountered, it may lead to food-related memory retrieval. If retrieval occurs, the memory's affective content allows one to know if food will be good to eat now-hunger-a cognitive operation learned in childhood. These memory processes are acutely inhibited during satiety, and chronically by multiple biological parameters, allowing physiology to modulate hunger. Implications are considered for the process of making hunger judgments, thirst, the cephalic phase response, and motivational and lay theories of hunger. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial disgust in response to touches, smells, and tastes.

Disgust serves to defend the body from the entry of toxins and disease. Central to this function is a strong relationship with the proximate senses of smell, taste, and touch. Theory suggests that distinct and reflexive facial movements should be evoked by gustatory and olfactory disgusts, serving to impede bodily entry. While this hypothesis has received some support from facial recognition studies, whether smell and taste disgusts actually produce distinct facial responses, is unknown. Moreover, there has been no assessment of the facial response evoked by contact with disgusting objects. To address these issues, this study compared facial responses to touch, smell, and taste disgusts. Sixty-four participants were asked to touch, smell, and taste disgust-evoking and neutral control stimuli, and rate them on disgust, on two occasions-first, while they were video recorded and second, with facial electromyography (EMG) applied (measuring levator labii and corrugator supercilii activity). Videos were coded for facial expressions by humans and for facial action units (FAUs) by machines. Self-report data confirmed the disgust stimuli as highly disgusting. Comparison of the overall pattern of FAUs evoked by touch, smell, and taste disgusts, indicated two distinct facial disgusts for the proximate senses-a chemosensory and a tactile-disgust face. The nose wrinkle and upper lip raise were central to all facial disgusts, indicating their centrality to the disgust face. Several facial disgusts appear to exist, each with different functional goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention, response inhibition, and hoarding: A neuropsychological examination.

Background and aims: The prominent cognitive-behavioral model of hoarding posits that information processing deficits contribute to hoarding disorder. Although individuals with hoarding symptoms consistently self-report attentional and impulsivity difficulties, neuropsychological tests have inconsistently identified impairments. These mixed findings may be the result of using different neuropsychological tests, tests with poor psychometric properties, and/or testing individuals in a context that drastically differs from their own homes. Methods: One hundred twenty-three participants (hoarding = 63; control = 60) completed neuropsychological tests of sustained attention, focused attention, and response inhibition in cluttered and tidy environments in a counterbalanced order. Results: Hoarding participants demonstrated poorer sustained attention and response inhibition than the control group (CPT-3 Omission and VST scores) and poorer response inhibition in the cluttered environment than when in the tidy environment (VST scores). CPT-3 Detectability and Commission scores also indicated that hoarding participants had greater difficulty sustaining attention and inhibiting responses than the control group; however, these effect sizes were just below the lowest practically meaningful magnitude. Posthoc exploratory analyses demonstrated that fewer than one-third of hoarding participants demonstrated sustained attention and response inhibition difficulties and that these participants reported greater hoarding severity and greater distress in the cluttered room. Discussion and conclusions: Given these findings and other studies showing that attentional difficulties may be a transdiagnostic factor for psychopathology, future studies will want to explore whether greater sustained attention and response inhibition difficulties in real life contexts contribute to comorbidity and functional impairment in hoarding disorder.

Habitual intake of fat and sugar is associated with poorer memory and greater impulsivity in humans.

The vicious cycle model of obesity suggests that repeated habitual intake of a diet high in fat and sugar (HFS) results in impairment in hippocampal function which in turn increases impulsive behaviours, making it harder to resist unhealthy diet choices. Evidence from studies with rodents consistently show switching to a HFS diet impairs performance on hippocampally-sensitive memory tasks. The limited literature in humans also suggest impaired memory and increased impulsivity related to higher habitual HFS intake. However, these changes in memory and impulsivity have been looked at independently. To investigate how these effects are inter-related, three experiments were conducted where relative HFS intake was related to measures of memory and impulsivity. In Experiment 1 (90 female participants), HFS was associated with higher scores on the Everyday Memory Questionnaire-revised (EMQ), and higher scores on the total, Attention (BISatt) and Motor (BISmot) sub-scales of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS11). Experiment 2 (84 women and 35 men), replicated the association between HFS and EMQ, and also found HFS related to poorer performance on the hippocampally-sensitive 4 mountain (4MT) memory task. The association between HFS intake and the BISatt replicated, but there were no significant associations with other BIS11 measures or delay-discounting for monetary rewards. Experiment 3 (199 women and 87 men) replicated the associations between DFS and 4MT and EMQ, and also found an association with overall recall, but not response inhibition, from a Remembering Causes Forgetting task: HFS was also significantly associated with BIS total, BISatt and BISmot. In all three studies these associations remained when potential confounds (BMI, age, gender, hunger state, restrained and disinhibited eating) were controlled for. Mediation analysis found that the effect of HFS on memory at least part mediated the relationship between HFS and impulsivity in Experiments 1 and 3, but not 2. Overall these data provide some support for the vicious cycle model, but also suggest that trait impulsivity may be a risk factor for poor dietary choice.

The psychological basis of hunger and its dysfunctions.

This article describes a new and emerging psychological perspective on hunger, together with the implications of that perspective, which is based upon learning and memory. Hunger is a psychological state characterized by a desire to eat. Historically, conceptions of hunger have largely been expressed in terms of physiology (eg, biological process X causes hunger). However, physiology neither offers a psychological account of hunger nor explains why memory impairment can eliminate hunger. Two forms of hunger are identified - specific and general. Specific hunger is for particular palatable foods. It involves recollecting episodic memories of eating that food, when an associated cue is encountered (eg, an advert). General hunger is a desire to eat triggered by temporal (eg, it is lunchtime) or interoceptive (eg, tummy rumble) cues. It involves semantic memory retrieval, which then augments the expected - remembered - pleasure for any food. Both hungers are supported by the medial temporal lobe memory system. Damage to this system can occur from eating a Western-style diet and, longer-term, from obesity and its consequences. Medial temporal lobe memory damage may cause deficits in specific hunger, but most especially in general hunger, resulting in little motivation to eat foods that the individual considers to be of low-to-moderate palatability, such as fruit and vegetables. The implications of this account for teaching people hunger, for how hunger is affected by diet, for public education, and pharmaceutical intervention, are discussed. Psychological concepts of hunger are widely used in nutritional practice. This article provides a new and emerging perspective on the psychological basis of hunger and its implications.

Predictors of state-based changes in wanting and liking.

People report wanting food when they are hungry, and on eating it they typically report liking the experience. After eating, both wanting and liking decline, but wanting declines to a greater extent, which we term the 'affective discrepancy effect'. In this study we examine the predictors - state, sensory and memory-based - of these affective changes. Hungry participants undertook three tasks: (1) written recollections of what certain foods are like to eat; (2) ratings of wanting and expected flavour liking and fillingness when looking at snacks, and ratings of food and flavour liking when eating them; (3) ratings of bodily state. These tasks were then repeated after lunch. State-based changes in food liking were best predicted by changes in flavour liking. For state-based change in wanting, memory-based information about flavour liking and fillingness from tasks (1) and (2) were all significant predictors. For recollections about eating (task 1), mentions of food fillingness significantly increased pre-to post-lunch and this was the best predictor of the affective discrepancy effect. Recollections of food fillingness are state-dependent, and can arise unbidden (i.e., such recollective content was unprompted). This may reflect one way that memory may selectively influence wanting, and hence whether food intake is initiated or not.

The psychological basis of reductions in food desire during satiety.

Satiety-the reduced desire to eat, drink or have sex in their respective aftermath-is particularly important for feeding, where it assists energy balance. During satiety, the anticipated pleasure of eating is far less than the actual pleasure of eating. Here we examine two accounts of this effect: (i) satiety signals inhibit retrieval of pleasant food memories that form desirable images, allowing unpleasant memories into mind; (ii) feelings of fullness reflect what eating would be like now, negating the need for imagery. To test these accounts, participants undertook two tasks pre- and post-lunch: (i) judging desire for palatable foods either with or without imagery impairing manipulations; (ii) explicitly recollecting food memories. Impairing imagery reduced desire equally, when hungry and sated. Food-memory recollections became more negative/less positive when sated, with this correlating with changes in desire. These findings support the first account and suggest imagery is used when hungry and when sated to simulate eating, and that the content of these memory-based simulations changes with state. The nature of this process and its implications for satiety more generally are discussed.

Interoceptive hunger, eating attitudes and beliefs.

Interoceptive individual differences have garnered interest because of their relationship with mental health. One type of individual difference that has received little attention is variability in the sensation/s that are understood to mean a particular interoceptive state, something that may be especially relevant for hunger. We examined if interoceptive hunger is multidimensional and idiosyncratic, if it is reliable, and if it is linked to dysfunctional eating and beliefs about the causes of hunger. Participants completed a survey just before a main meal, with most retested around 1 month later. We found that interoceptive hunger has 11 dimensions, and while people differ considerably in their combinations of interoceptive hungers, these represent only 4% of all possible permutations. Hunger reports were reliable. We found relationships between variability in hunger interoception and dysfunctional eating, especially for uncontrolled eating. We also found that hunger beliefs were in some cases strongly related to aspects of hunger interoception. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Situational, emotional, and individual dispositions to weight gain in people with hoarding problems.

OBJECTIVES: Individuals with hoarding disorder are more likely to be overweight or obese than the general population for unknown reasons. METHODS: One hundred and twenty-nine individuals (Hoarding Group: n = 63; Control Group: n = 66) completed self-report measures and were offered snacks in a tidy and a cluttered environment in a counterbalanced order. Groups were based on the self-reporting of high or low hoarding symptoms. RESULTS: The hoarding group reported being less able to use their kitchen and prepare food at home and experiencing more impulsivity, distress intolerance and problematic eating beliefs than did the control group. The hoarding group consumed more cookies in the tidy room, whereas the control group consumed more cookies in the cluttered room. Greater impulsivity, distress intolerance and problematic body and eating beliefs were related to greater cookie consumption for the hoarding group. CONCLUSIONS: Early interventions that help individuals to tolerate distress and to engage in goal-directed behaviour regardless of their emotional state may have benefits for both hoarding and eating behaviour. We encourage future researchers to examine this hypothesis.

The development of interoceptive hunger signals.

Hunger is often reported when people experience certain internal sensations (e.g., fatigue) or when they anticipate that a food will be good to eat. The latter results from associative learning, while the former was thought to signal an energy deficit. However, energy-deficit models of hunger are not well supported, so if interoceptive hungers are not "fuel gauges," what are they? We examined an alternate perspective, where internal states signaling hunger, which are quite diverse, are learned during childhood. A basic prediction from this idea is offspring-caregiver similarity, which should be evident if caregivers teach their child the meaning of internal hunger cues. We tested 111 university student offspring-primary caregiver pairs, by having them complete a survey about their internal hunger states, alongside other information that may moderate this relationship (i.e., gender, body mass index, eating attitudes, and beliefs about hunger). We observed substantial similarity between offspring-caregiver pairs (Cohen's ds from 0.33 to 1.55), with the main moderator being beliefs about an energy-needs model of hunger, which tended to increase similarity. We discuss whether these findings may also reflect heritable influences, the form that any learning might take, and the implications for child feeding practices.

Disgusting odors trigger the oral immune system.

Recent research has characterized the behavioral defense against disease. In particular the detection of sickness cues, the adaptive reactions (e.g. avoidance) to these cues and the mediating role of disgust have been the focus. A presumably important but less investigated part of a behavioral defense is the immune system response of the observer of sickness cues. Odors are intimately connected to disease and disgust, and research has shown how olfaction conveys sickness cues in both animals and humans. This study aims to test whether odorous sickness cues (i.e. disgusting odors) can trigger a preparatory immune response in humans. We show that subjective and objective disgust measures, as well as TNFα levels in saliva increased immediately after exposure to disgusting odors in a sample of 36 individuals. Altogether, these results suggest a collaboration between behavioral mechanisms of pathogen avoidance in olfaction, mediated by the emotion of disgust, and mechanisms of pathogen elimination facilitated by inflammatory mediators. Disgusting stimuli are associated with an increased risk of infection. We here test whether disgusting odors, can trigger an immune response in the oral cavity. The results indicate an increase level of TNFα in the saliva. This supports that disease cues can trigger a preparatory response in the oral cavity.

What's in a name? Role of verbal context in touch.

Can a name (i.e. verbal context) change how we react to and perceive an object? This question has been addressed several times for chemosensory objects, but appears unanswered for touch. To address this, two studies were run. In each, we allocated participants to a Positive, Neutral or Negative Group, and asked them to touch the same four objects, twice-first, named by the experimenter according to their Group-name, and second, named by the participant. Participants were timed as they touched and rated the objects on pleasantness and disgust. Negative-named objects were touched for shorter durations, and rated more negatively, than neutral-named objects, and positive-named objects were touched for the longest and rated most positively. In the second presentation, most objects (greater than 90%) were named by participants in accordance with their assigned Group-names. The similarity of these findings to chemosensory verbal context effects and their mechanistic basis is discussed.

Kynurenic acid as a biochemical factor underlying the association between Western-style diet and depression: A cross-sectional study.

Consumption of a Western-style diet (WS-diet), high in saturated fat and added sugar, is associated with increased depression risk. However, the physiological mechanisms underlying the relationship requires elucidation. Diet can alter tryptophan metabolism along the kynurenine pathway (KP), potentially linking inflammation and depression. This study aimed to examine whether urinary inflammatory markers and KP metabolites differed according to WS-diet consumption and depression severity. Depression symptoms and habitual WS-diet consumption were assessed in 169 healthy adults aged 17-35 recruited from two experimental studies. Targeted metabolomics profiling of seven KP metabolites, ELISA-based assays of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) were performed using urine samples collected from the participants. Parametric tests were performed for group comparison and associations analysis. Multilevel mixed-effect modelling was applied to control for biases. Higher intake of WS-diet was associated with lower levels of neuroprotective kynurenic acid (KA; R = -0.17, p = 0.0236). There were no differences in IL-6 or CRP across diet groups (p > 0.05). Physical activity had negative associations with most KP metabolites. Mixed-effects regression analysis showed the glutamatergic inhibitor, KA, was the only biomarker to have a significant association with depression symptoms in a model adjusted for demographic and lifestyle variables: a unit increase in KA was associated with 0.21 unit decrease in Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 depression score (p = 0.009). These findings suggest that urinary KA is associated with both habitual WS-diet intake, and levels of depression symptoms, independent of inflammation. Findings support the role of neuroprotection and glutamatergic modulation in depression. We propose that KA may act as endogenous glutamatergic inhibition in regulating depression severity in the absence of inflammation. Further comparison with blood-based markers will assist in validating the utility of non-invasive urine samples for measuring KP metabolites.

Recollections about food when hungry and sated.

Memory processes may have several roles in appetite regulation. Here we examine one such role, derived from the animal literature, in which satiety cues lead to the inhibition of rewarding food-related memories. We tested this idea over three studies (n's of 58, 67, 50 respectively), by presenting participants with visual or verbal food cues, and asking them to describe what these foods were like to eat. This recollection task was undertaken hungry and sated. The resulting recollections were then coded and contrasted across state. Irrespective of state, participants took the same time to make their recollections, they were of similar length and included the same amount of sensory detail and affective content. However, in all three studies, sated recollections tended to include more reports about how filling a food would be. This increase in reports of food fillingness across state, was significantly correlated with increases in reports of stomach distension across state. While these results are consistent with the operation of memory inhibition, a further possibility is considered, whereby interoceptive satiety cues are integrated into food-related recollections (but not other recollections) to form a memory-inteorception-combination, thereby drawing attention to the consequences of eating when sated.

Appetitive interoception, the hippocampus and western-style diet.

Obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders continue to pose serious challenges to human health and well-being. An important source of these challenges is the overconsumption of saturated fats and sugar, main staples of what has been called the Western-style diet (WD). The current paper describes a theoretical model and supporting evidence that links intake of a WD to interference with a specific brain substrate that underlies processing of interoceptive signals of hunger and satiety. We review findings from rats and humans that the capacity of these signals to modulate the strength of appetitive and eating behavior depends on the functional integrity of the hippocampus and the learning memory operations it performs. Important among these operations is the use of contextual information to retrieve memories that are associated with other events. Within our framework, satiety provides an interoceptive context that informs animals that food cues and appetitive behavior will not be followed by rewarding postingestive outcomes. This serves to prevent those cues and responses from retrieving those reward memories. The findings reviewed provide evidence that consuming a WD and the high amounts of saturated fat and sugar it contains (a) is associated with the emergence of pathophysiologies to which the hippocampus appears selectively vulnerable (b) impairs hippocampal-dependent learning and memory (HDLM) and (c) weakens behavioral control by interoceptive hunger and satiety contextual stimuli. It is hypothesized that these consequences of WD intake may establish the conditions for a vicious cycle of further WD intake, obesity, and potentially cognitive decline.

Tactile disgust: Post-contact can be more disgusting than contact.

Several studies have examined if disgust can be evoked by contacting an object-yet none have examined if reported disgust changes when the hand leaves the object. This is surprising given that post-contact tactile disgust is probably a driver of hand hygiene. We examined contact and post-contact tactile disgust and its sensory origins. Participants were asked to touch several objects, making sensory, disgust, and desire-to-handwash evaluations. These ratings were made at three stages-of-contact: object-contact (just touch), post-contact (just touch), and visual post-contact (touch, vision). Disgust was typically highest at post-contact (when the hand left the object). Stickiness and wetness were uniquely predictive of object-contact disgust. Only stickiness drove post-contact disgust, and only wetness visual post-contact disgust. Hand-washing desire was primarily driven by quantity of residue perceived on the hand. These findings suggest that tactile disgust is a multisensory and iterative process relating to object- and residue-adhesiveness.