A strong activation of this region when seeing food images is a direct indicator of the subsequent behavior to approach the stimulus.
Findings of Delgado, Stenger and Fiez (2004) suggest that changes in motivation are capable of modulating basal ganglia activity, and further support an important role for the caudate nucleus in affective processing.
Being able to estimate the reward value of visual objects is a crucial factor in guiding ones behavioral choices and studies have shown that the involvement of the caudate nucleus in decision making is context-dependent, reward related information being processed in the head of the caudate primarily when the information is relevant to one’s goal.
Imaging and neural-recording studies have revealed that the dorsal striatum plays an important role also in learning such stimulus-action-reward associations and a correlation with reward-prediction error was found largely in the caudate nucleus, while studies on monkeys shown that inactivation of caudate subregions disrupted the high-low value discrimination selectively in the flexible or stable context.
Also clinical studies revealed that subjects with major depression present significantly weaker responses to monetary gains in the caudate nucleus and anhedonic symptoms and depression severity were associated with reduced caudate volume bilaterally.
All these data support the hypothesis that caudate nucleus as part of the striatum is a key structure in reward based behavior, linking the evaluation of the reward value of a stimulus, with decision making processes and the consequently approach behavior.
The activation of this brain structure in our study at the presentation of certain food package proved to be a reliable predictor of the consumption habits of the participants.
Many studies have shown that striatal activity correlates with hedonic rating scales.
Neuromarketers have been quick to invert this finding and use ventral striatal activity as an indication that an individual likes something.
Because the field of neuromarketing grew out of early brain-imaging studies of the neurobiology of reward most of the neuromarketing data are about valuation mechanisms and the associated responses of dopamine-rich brain regions.
The striatum have been consistently implicated in goal-directed action. Our study is consistent with these data indicating striatum activation as a brain correlate for consumption and/or preference.