Neural predictors of eating behavior and dietary change

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of human neuroimaging studies seeking to predict behavior above and beyond traditional measurements such as self-report. This trend has been particularly notable in the area of food consumption, as the percentage of people categorized as overweight or obese continues to rise. In this review, we argue that there is considerable utility in this form of health neuroscience, modeling the neural bases of eating behavior and dietary change in healthy community populations. Further, we propose a model and accompanying evidence indicating that several basic processes underlying eating behavior, particularly reactivity, regulation, and valuation, can be predictive of behavior change. We also discuss future directions for this work.