Early life climate and adulthood mental health: how birth seasonality influences depressive symptoms in adults.

BACKGROUND: Early life in-utero can have long-term influence on the mental health status of individuals in adulthood, such as depression. Age, gender, socio-economic status, education, and geography are demographic factors shown to be particularly vulnerable towards the development of depressive symptoms. In addition, climate risks on depression include sunlight, rain, and temperature. However, whether climate factors in early life have a long-term influence on depression related to demographic vulnerability remains unknown. Here, the present study explored the association between birth seasonality and adulthood depressive symptoms. METHODS: We employed data from the project of Chinese Labour-forces Dynamic Survey (CLDS) 2016, containing the epidemiological data of depressive symptoms with a probability proportional to size cluster and random cluster sampling method in 29 provinces of China. A final sample size of 16,185 participants was included. Birth seasonality included spring (March, April, and May), summer (June, July, and August), autumn (September, October, and November), and winter (December, January, and February). RESULTS: We found that born in Autumn peaked lowest rate of having depressive symptoms (16.8%) and born in Summer (vs. Autumn) had a significant higher ratio (OR = 1.14, 95%CI = 1.02, 1.29) when controlling for demographic variables. In addition, demographic odds ratio of having depressive symptoms differed between people born in different seasons, particular for age and geography. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that birth seasonality influences the sensitive link of depressive symptoms with age and geography. It implicates early life climate environment may play a role in the development of adulthood depressive symptoms.

Sounds Healthy: Modelling sound-evoked consumer food choice through visual attention.

Food choice is a multifaceted construct that is not solely guided by our internal incentives. In fact, sensory scientist, consumer psychologists, and marketers have demonstrated that external ambient cues, including background music, can influence myriads of subconscious consumer behaviors, effectively leading to increased sales of food and beverages. However, the vast majority of literature in on this topic has thus far been confined to monocultural field studies in which the underlying mechanisms of food choice are unexplored. We therefore studied the explicit and implicit effects of custom-composed soundtracks on food choices and eye-movements in consumers from both 'East' and 'West'. Firstly, based on the results from a pre-study (N = 396), we composed a 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' soundtrack. Subsequently, we recruited 215 participants from China (n = 114) and Denmark (n = 101) respectively for in an in-laboratory eye-tracking food choice paradigm. For each culture, half of the participants listened to the 'healthy' soundtrack and the other half to the 'unhealthy' soundtrack during the experiment. Chi-square tests of independence revealed that across cultures, the healthy (vs. unhealthy) soundtrack led to more healthy food choices. Similarly, the generalized linear mixed models showed that the healthy soundtrack induced more and longer fixations on healthy (vs. unhealthy) food. Finally, a multiple mediation analysis signified a partial mediation effect of sound on food choice through the mediators of fixation duration, fixation count, and revisit count. Our results indicate that, with strategically chosen soundscapes, it is possible to influence consumers' decision-making processes and guide their attention towards healthier foods, providing valuable knowledge for local as well as global food business.

Systematically lower structural brain connectivity in individuals with elevated food addiction symptoms.

Symptoms of food addiction have been observed in both obesity and eating disorders. The food addiction model may therefore posit a continuum of dysfunctional personality traits, including increased impulsivity and poor decision-making. The current study explored the neuroanatomy of addictive-like eating behavior from a novel triadic model of addiction. Specifically, we focused on three interacting neural systems; a sensitized impulsive, reward system associated with striatal structures, a desensitized reflective control system governed by prefrontal cortex, and a disrupted insula-mediated interoceptive system responsible for integrating and translating interoceptive, somatic signals into feelings of anticipation, desires, or cravings. Sixty-four healthy-weight Chinese university students were scanned for high-resolution structural and diffusion imaging. Data from the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), Binge Eating Scale, Eating Attitude Test-26, UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, and Delay Discounting Task were collected. Based on YFAS-score, participants were divided into a High Food Addiction group (HFA) and a Low Food Addiction group (LFA). Diffusion tensor imaging results revealed that compared to LFA, HFA had lower structural connectivity between insula and anterior cingulate cortex, insula and caudate, and ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC) and putamen. The Voxel-Based Morphometry analysis suggested marginally lower gray matter volume in the left vmPFC in HFA. Finally, behavioral results, indicated that higher food addiction symptoms were associated with personality traits exhibited in eating disorders including impulsive decision-making. These findings suggest that even in a healthy population, some individuals may be more susceptible to develop unhealthy relationships to food, which at least partially is manifested in lower structural connectivity between brain regions associated with interoceptive awareness, decision-making, and reward.

The impact of environmental sounds on food reward.

Wanting and liking are both components of food reward, but they manifest in fundamentally different neural substrates. While wanting denotes anticipatory and motivational behaviors, liking is associated with consummatory and hedonic experiences. These distinct constructs have also been quantitatively dissociated in behavioral paradigms. Indeed, internal, physiological, and interoceptive states affect the degree to which the food presented is valued. However, how contextual sensory cues might impact these appetitive and rewarding responses to food remains unexplored. In light of the increasing empirical focus on sound in food research, we investigated the influence of environmental soundscapes on explicit liking, explicit wanting, implicit wanting, choice frequency, and reaction time of healthy/unhealthy food using an online version of the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire (LFPQ). Soft nature sounds and loud restaurant noises were employed to induce emotional relaxation and arousal respectively. One hundred and one healthy university students completed a repeated-measure design of the LFPQ; once with each soundscape playing in the background. Generalized linear mixed model analyses detected a significant interaction effect between soundscape and food type on choice frequency, yet the post hoc analyses did not reach significance. No interaction effects between soundscape and food type on wanting or liking were discovered. However, hypothesis-driven analyses found that nature sounds increased explicit liking of healthy (vs. unhealthy) foods, while no effect of soundscape on any wanting measures (explicit or implicit) were observed. Finally, exploratory analyses indicated that restaurant noise (vs. nature sound) induced faster response times for both healthy and unhealthy foods. The study exemplifies that in an online setting, contextual auditory manipulation of certain food reward measures and decision processes is feasible.

"Sound" Decisions: The Combined Role of Ambient Noise and Cognitive Regulation on the Neurophysiology of Food Cravings.

Our ability to evaluate long-term goals over immediate rewards is manifested in the brain's decision circuit. Simplistically, it can be divided into a fast, impulsive, reward "system 1" and a slow, deliberate, control "system 2." In a noisy eating environment, our cognitive resources may get depleted, potentially leading to cognitive overload, emotional arousal, and consequently more rash decisions, such as unhealthy food choices. Here, we investigated the combined impact of cognitive regulation and ambient noise on food cravings through neurophysiological activity. Thirty-seven participants were recruited for an adapted version of the Regulation of Craving (ROC) task. All participants underwent two sessions of the ROC task; once with soft ambient restaurant noise (∼50 dB) and once with loud ambient restaurant noise (∼70 dB), while data from electroencephalography (EEG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and self-reported craving were collected for all palatable food images presented in the task. The results indicated that thinking about future ("later") consequences vs. immediate ("now") sensations associated with the food decreased cravings, which were mediated by frontal EEG alpha power. Likewise, "later" trials also increased frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) -an index for emotional motivation. Furthermore, loud (vs. soft) noise increased alpha, beta, and theta activity, but for theta activity, this was solely occurring during "later" trials. Similarly, EDA signal peak probability was also higher during loud noise. Collectively, our findings suggest that the presence of loud ambient noise in conjunction with prospective thinking can lead to the highest emotional arousal and cognitive load as measured by EDA and EEG, respectively, both of which are important in regulating cravings and decisions. Thus, exploring the combined effects of interoceptive regulation and exteroceptive cues on food-related decision-making could be methodologically advantageous in consumer neuroscience and entail theoretical, commercial, and managerial implications.

The effect of secondhand smoke exposure on self-satisfaction and perceived freedom of life choice.

Objective: The present study aims to examine whether secondhand smoke exposure (SHSE) in university students can affect three indices of self-satisfaction related to depression as indiced by appearance, weight, and freedom of life choice. Participants: We collected data from 740 nonsmoking students in the summer of 2018, of which 57.84% were exposed to secondhand smoke. Methods: Depressive symptoms, SHSE, smoking status, weight satisfaction, appearance satisfaction, and freedom of life choice were self-reported via a questionnaire. Results: The generalized linear analyses revealed that SHSE was linked to lower scores of perceived freedom of life choice but not significantly associated with weight nor appearance satisfaction. The mediation analyses indicated that perceived freedom of life choice fully mediated the association between SHSE and depressive symptoms. Conclusions: These findings shed light on the importance of SHSE and its effects on mental health in university students. Preventive strategies should therefore locally target university campuses.

The Effects of Ethnically Congruent Music on Eye Movements and Food Choice-A Cross-Cultural Comparison between Danish and Chinese Consumers.

Musical fit refers to the congruence between music and attributes of a food or product in context, which can prime consumer behavior through semantic networks in memory. The vast majority of research on this topic dealing with musical fit in a cultural context has thus far been limited to monocultural groups in field studies, where uncontrolled confounds can potentially influence the study outcome. To overcome these limitations, and in order to explore the effects of ethnically congruent music on visual attention and food choice across cultures, the present study recruited 199 participants from China (n = 98) and Denmark (n = 101) for an in-laboratory food choice paradigm with eye-tracking data collection. For each culture group, the study used a between-subject design with half of the participants listening to only instrumental "Eastern" music and the other half only listening to instrumental "Western" music, while both groups engaged in a food choice task involving "Eastern" and "Western" food. Chi-square tests revealed a clear ethnic congruency effect between music and food choice across culture, whereby Eastern (vs. Western) food was chosen more during the Eastern music condition, and Western (vs. Eastern) food was chosen more in the Western music condition. Furthermore, results from a generalized linear mixed model suggested that Chinese participants fixated more on Western (vs. Eastern) food when Western music was played, whereas Danish participants fixated more on Eastern (vs. Western) food when Eastern music was played. Interestingly, no such priming effects were found when participants listened to music from their own culture, suggesting that music-evoked visual attention may be culturally dependent. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that ambient music can have a significant impact on consumers' explicit and implicit behaviors, while at the same time highlighting the importance of culture-specific sensory marketing applications in the global food industry.

Intraday weather conditions can influence self-report of depressive symptoms.

The weather is arguably one of the most common topics in daily conversation. However, it is also a well-known factor in psychiatric problems worldwide such as depression, where particularly elders and females are prone to the condition. Previous studies have mostly focused on the association between long-term climate/season change and depressive symptoms to test the belief that people feel depressed when the weather is bad. Yet, little is known about the relationship between intraday weather conditions and depressive symptoms. This study aimed to decompose this association and explore age and gender differences in depressive symptoms' report under different intraday weather conditions. We analyzed data with a total sample size of 20,987 individuals aged 15-96 years obtained via the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) project in 2016. The surveyors filled in the intraday weather conditions (i.e., sunny, cloudy, overcast, light rain, moderate rain, and heavy rain) in the questionnaire with depression being self-reported using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale. In the survey, 17.3% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 16.8%, 17.8%] individuals were assessed to have depressive symptoms (CES-D scores >15). Overcast day was the peak weather condition for depressive symptoms, while gender and age differences of depressive symptoms were biggest in the weather condition of moderate rain. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that female and middle-old age individuals were more likely to report having depressive symptoms, and people under overcast day were more likely to report having depressive symptoms compared to under sunny day [odds ratio (OR) = 1.25, 95%CI = 1.11, 1.39]. This intraday weather conditions-depression link was significant in males and middle-old age individuals but not in females and youngsters.