Mother influences children's choice of food

Childhood food choices can establish life-long behavioral patterns related to health. However, the decision-making behavior of children, including the neural mechanisms underlying food selection, remains unclear.

The Amanda Bruce team at the University of Kansas Medical Center conducted behavioral tests and functional magnetic resonance imaging data to study the behavior and brain activity of 25 children aged 8 to 14 when they chose food. They showed children pictures of more than 60 kinds of foods, including apples, broccoli, French fries and marshmallows, and let children evaluate the health properties of these foods. They asked about the extent to which some children liked certain foods (their personal choices) and asked another child to guess the possibility of their mother choosing a certain food.

The researchers incorporated these results into a behavioral model and showed that the best way to explain children’s food choices is to combine their own tastes with the expectations of their presumed mothers for their choice. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data further show that children’s own food choices will activate the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in the brain responsible for reward value, and guess that their mother’s food choices make the brain responsible for self-control Region - left dorsal prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activated.

In addition, the researchers found that dlvPFC has inhibitory effects on the brain activity of vmPFC when children make food choices. The results show that at the neuronal level, adult preferences have a moderating effect on developing children's decisions.