Conscious and unconscious brain responses to food and cocaine cues

Visual presentation of appetitive and negative cues triggers fast responses in the human brain. Here we assessed functional MRI (fMRI) responses to food, cocaine, and neutral cues presented at a subliminal ("unconscious", 33 ms) and supraliminal ("conscious", 750 and 3000 ms) level in healthy, cocaine naïve volunteers. Because there is evidence of circadian variability in reward sensitivity, our second aim was to assess diurnal variability in the brain's reactivity to cues. Sixteen participants completed two randomly ordered fMRI sessions (once 9-11 AM and another 5-7 PM). in which food, cocaine, and neutral cues were presented for 33, 750 and 3000 ms. Participants rated food cues as positive and "wanted" (more so in evenings than mornings), and cocaine cues as negative (no diurnal differences). fMRI showed occipital cortex activation for food>neutral, cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food, and midbrain for cocaine>food (all p_FWE < 0.05). When comparing unconscious (33 ms) > conscious (750 and 3000 ms) presentations, we observed significant differences for cocaine>neutral and cocaine>food in occipital cortex, for cocaine>neutral in the insula/temporal lobe, and for food>neutral in the middle temporal gyrus (p_FWE < 0.05). No diurnal differences for brain activations were observed. We interpret these findings to suggest that negative items (e.g., cocaine) might be perceived at a faster speed than positive ones (e.g., food), although we cannot rule out that the higher saliency of cocaine cues, which would be novel to non-drug using individuals, contributed to the faster speed of detection.