The relationships between health information behavior and neural processing in african americans with prehypertension

Information behavior may enhance hypertension self-management in African-Americans. The goal of this substudy was to examine relationships between measures of self-reported health information behavior and neural measures of health information processing in a sample of 19 prehypertensive African-Americans (mean age=52.5, 52.6% women). We measured 1) health information seeking, sharing, and use (surveys) and 2) neural activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess response to health information videos. We hypothesized that differential activation (comparison of analytic vs. empathic brain activity when watching a specific type of video) would indicate better function in three, distinct cognitive domains: 1) Analytic Network, 2) Default Mode Network (DMN), and 3) ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Scores on the information sharing measure (but not seeking or use) were positively associated with differential activation in the vmPFC (rs=.53, p=.02) and the DMN (rs=.43, p=.06). Our findings correspond with previous work indicating that activation of the DMN and vmPFC is associated with sharing information to persuade others, and with behavior change. Although health information is commonly conveyed as detached and analytic in nature, our findings suggest that neural processing of socially and emotionally salient health information is more closely associated with health information sharing.