Organic or popular brands-food perception engages distinct functional pathways. An fMRI study

Introduction: Organic food has become increasingly popular with consumers. People seem to recognize it as a valuable alternative to popular brands from conventional food producers. Still, the basis of such consumer behavior remains unclear, with the literature supporting motivations ranging from health-related to more hedonic. Methods: To investigate the underlying brain processes, we looked for neural correlates of the perceptions of two types of psychological added value that brands could provide (popular/organic). Eighteen subjects were exposed to logos of brands of either category for the very same types of food that was typed below the logo (i.e. French fries) and blood-oxygen-level dependent brain activation was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results: The results show higher activations in medial prefrontal cortex for popular brands, as expected with respect to the existing literature on decision-making and self-control. For organic brands, we found relatively higher activations in dorsolateral parts of the prefrontal cortex. Conclusions: Our study contributes data from the food field to the converging evidence in the literature that the lateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex have discrete and independent influences on decision-making: Brand information (as a secondary inducer) substantially affects the processing of food stimuli (as a primary inducer).