4. Discussion
digestive dysfunction
Our study shows that pairing a pleasant meal with an experimentally-induced aversive sensation conditions the postprandial response to subsequent consumption of the same meal. Interestingly, aversive conditioning impaired the hedonic experience without significant impacts on homeostatic sensations or the physiological digestive response.The target for conditioning was a comfort probe meal [Aversive conditioning (i.e., previous pairing of the comfort meal with lipid-induced aversive sensation) conditioned the subsequent postprandial response to the same meal, particularly affecting the reward experience. Various mechanisms may be involved in the impairment of the postprandial experience by conditioning.In the first place, a satisfactory postprandial experience depends on a normal response of the digestive system, and conversely, digestive dysfunction deteriorates the postprandial experience [The conditioning paradigm used in the present experiments was analogous to that previously applied for conditioned taste aversion, pairing the rewarding meal with an aversive stimulus [Cognitive-emotive factors and expectations might be involved in conditioning the post-prandial experience. Indeed, a cognitive intervention (education) influenced the hedonic postprandial experience, without significant effects on homeostatic sensations [