A new study has revealed that our food choices are influenced by information retrieved from our memories.
Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland set out to investigate the neurological processes underlying the everyday decisions we make, such as 'Where shall we go for dinner?'
For the study, they recruited 60 young participants and showed them 48 images of snacks on a computer screen. This included foods such as chocolate bars, pretzels and chips.
Each snack was placed in a specific location on the screen and the participants were asked to rate each one in order of preference.
After, the researchers took functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the participants' brains, during which they were asked to choose between two snacks. However, half of the participants were only shown the location of the snack - meaning they had to recall the snack linked to each location - while the other half were shown the snack directly on the screen.
It was found that participants were more likely to choose the snacks they were able to recall the location of, despite whether they had rated them lower in preference previously.
On the other hand, those who were shown the image of the snacks directly on the screen had the same preference ratings as they had initially.
The fMRI results showed that as participants made their food choices, there was an increase in communication between the areas of the brain involved in memory and decision-making (the hippocampus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex).
Sebastian Gluth, lead researcher of the study, said: 'Our study builds a bridge between two central research fields of psychology, that is, memory and decision-making research.'
The study has been published in the journal Neuron.