INHIBITION OF ANTICIPATORY SALIVATION AND CRAVING IN RESPONSE TO FOODSTIMULI

Two experiments were done to study inhibition of cue-dependent salivat ion and craving responses. Experiment 1 suggests that total prevention of tasting during cue exposure inhibits salivation responses to choco late cues. On the other hand, salivation was triggered by chocolate cu es after tasting a very small amount of chocolate, indicating a very r obust and rapid learning of conditioned salivation responses. However, prevention of tasting during cue exposure did not affect craving, sug gesting that this method cannot decrease craving or that craving is af fected at different rate than salivation. Experiment 2 tested the hypo thesis that tasting irrelevant food during repeated exposure to chocol ate cues would inhibit anticipatory salivation and craving responses t o these cues. No support for this hypothesis was observed.