Is Deciding Not to Want the Same as No Longer Wanting?

When a decision changes our behavior, but may not immediately change what the body has learned to value

“I’m not going to eat that.”

The sentence seems simple.

We make decisions like this every day. We decide to reduce sugar, quit a habit, save money, exercise, study more, spend less time on our phones, or avoid something we know is not good for us.

There is a decision.

There is an intention.

But does deciding not to want something mean that it has stopped having value for us?

In 2026, Christina von der Assen and colleagues published a study in Brain and Cognition that offers an interesting opportunity to begin this conversation.

The study did not investigate consciousness, Body-Territory, or bodily memory.

It addressed a much more specific — and therefore scientifically important — question:

Does temporary dieting modify the way the brain encodes our preferences for food rewards?

The researchers’ findings allow us to ask a second question.

Perhaps a much larger one.

First, the experiment

Von der Assen and colleagues studied 94 healthy adults: 45 were dieting and 49 were not. While EEG was recorded, participants performed a game-like task in which they opened virtual doors and received different rewards.

There were edible and non-edible rewards.

Importantly, these rewards were not simply categorized by the researchers as “good” or “bad.”

Before the task, participants individually rated them, allowing the rewards to be grouped according to subjective preference: high, medium, or low.

The experiment therefore aimed to observe not only the brain’s response to a reward, but how it responded to something that each specific person valued more or less.

During the task, the researchers examined different event-related potential components — ERPs — elicited after the presentation of the rewards.

These included P2, FRN, and P3, components that provide information about different temporal stages of reward processing.

And this is where the result that interests us appears.

Dieting did not produce the expected effect

The researchers expected to find differences between people who were dieting and those who were not, particularly when they received food rewards.

But this did not occur.

Temporary dieting did not produce a significant effect on the ERPs associated with reward receipt.

This does not mean that dieting “does not work.”

It also does not mean that a person is biologically incapable of changing their preferences.

The study demonstrated neither of these things.

What it showed was much more specific:

under those experimental conditions, temporarily restricting certain foods was not sufficient to produce the expected difference in the neural encoding of subjective preferences.

At the same time, participants’ preferences were reflected in the neural signals.

FRN and P3 showed preference-related encoding. In the frontal P3, this differentiation was especially evident for edible rewards, and additional analyses indicated that preference encoding persisted longer over centroparietal regions, particularly for food.

The authors therefore raise an interesting possibility: some subjective preferences may be relatively robust and may behave more like traits than states that are quickly modified by a short-term intervention.

And this is exactly where the experiment ends.

And our question begins.

Is deciding not to want the same as no longer wanting?

Imagine a person standing in front of a food they enjoy very much.

They have decided not to eat it.

That decision is real.

It may change their behavior.

It may allow them to walk past the food and move on.

But we need to distinguish at least three different events:

I like this.

I want this right now.

I decided not to do this.

These statements may sound similar, but perhaps they do not represent exactly the same process.

It is possible to decide against a preference.

It is possible to perform an action different from the one suggested by a preference.

And perhaps this can happen before the preference itself has been transformed.

This distinction deeply interests us.

Because our culture often imagines change as an almost instantaneous process:

“Now I have decided.”

And then:

“Therefore, now I am different.”

But an organism has a history.

The body has a history

We do not arrive at the present empty.

Foods have smells.

Textures.

Temperatures.

Memories.

Contexts.

They may be associated with childhood, family, celebrations, scarcity, abundance, reward, comfort, encounter, or belonging.

And the same is true for countless other objects and behaviors.

A phone is not simply a phone.

Money is not simply a number.

A song is not merely an acoustic sequence.

A particular street is not merely physical space.

A uniform, a word, a face, or a place may acquire value because it became part of an organism’s history.

At BrainLatam, we draw attention to a simple idea:

the body that reaches a decision has already lived before that decision.

We call this body happening here and now the Lived Body.

It has a physiological state, perception, memory, possibilities for action, and a history built through its relationships with its territory.

This does not mean that the study by von der Assen and colleagues “proved bodily memory.”

It did not.

The study investigated the neural encoding of reward preferences during an experimental task.

Bodily memory is the question we ask next.

Memory for doing, not necessarily memory for being

Perhaps one of the most interesting consequences of this discussion concerns the way we think about identity.

Imagine someone saying:

“I am the kind of person who cannot resist sweets.”

Perhaps this statement mixes two different things.

One is:

my organism has a history in which certain foods acquired strong value.

Another, very different one, is:

this defines who I am.

BrainLatam proposes that many memories can be understood as memories for doing, not necessarily memories for being.

The organism learns repertoires.

It learns approaches.

It learns avoidance.

It learns expectations.

It learns movements.

This does not mean that any of these repertoires must become a permanent identity.

Perhaps we can perceive a preference without necessarily obeying it.

And perhaps we can choose a new movement before the entire system supporting that preference has reorganized.

In that case, freedom would not necessarily mean:

“I no longer feel this.”

It could mean:

“I can perceive what is happening and still find another possible movement.”

This is where a new experimental question emerges

If we want to move forward scientifically, it is not enough to turn this reflection into philosophy.

We need to return to the laboratory.

For example:

How long must a behavioral change persist before we observe changes in the neural encoding of preference?

Two weeks?

Two months?

Two years?

Another question:

Are changing behavior and changing preference different neural processes?

Or:

Can a person consistently learn to choose against a preference without the preference disappearing?

We could also add the body.

What would happen if we simultaneously recorded EEG and peripheral physiological signals?

Heart rate.

Heart-rate variability.

Skin conductance.

Respiration.

Perhaps two people could produce the same behavior — refusing a reward — while their organisms arrive at that action through completely different paths.

Externally:

the same behavior.

Internally:

perhaps two entirely different movements.

And what if we add the territory?

Now we can expand the question again.

Does a food preference exist only inside the brain?

Or does its stability also depend on the environment in which the person lives?

What happens when the food is available every day?

When it appears continuously in advertising?

When it is associated with family gatherings?

When healthier foods are more expensive?

When a person lives under chronic stress?

When they sleep poorly?

When food is one of the few accessible sources of pleasure in that territory?

These questions were not answered by the study of von der Assen and colleagues.

And we should not pretend that they were.

But their findings help us formulate something important:

changing a rule may not necessarily be the same as changing the entire system that made a preference possible.

And now we can begin searching for that system.

Where the article ends and BrainLatam begins

The study found evidence that subjective preferences were differentially represented in ERP components and that the temporary dieting intervention did not produce the expected modulation of this neural encoding.

The authors interpret these findings as compatible with the possibility that some preferences are relatively robust and may have trait-like characteristics.

Up to this point:

von der Assen and colleagues.

From this point onward:

BrainLatam.

Our question is:

What has to change in a Body-Territory for what it has learned to value to change as well?

Perhaps a new decision is the beginning.

Perhaps a new repertoire is necessary.

Then a new experience.

Then repetition.

Perhaps another environment.

Other relationships.

Other possibilities.

Until what once required effort not to do is no longer the most probable movement.

We do not yet know.

But now we have a question that can be tested.

And perhaps this is precisely one of neuroscience’s most important roles:

not to tell people what they are,

but to help us discover how what feels inevitable today may — or may not — become only one movement among many possible movements.

Neuro Challenge Latam

If you could follow a person for an entire year while they tried to change a habit, what would you measure to identify the moment when a decision begins to truly transform a preference?

Scientific Reference

von der Assen, C., Weber, C., Vahedi, J., Mundorf, A., Bellebaum, C., & Peterburs, J. (2026). Effects of Dieting on Neural Encoding of Preferences for Edible and Non-Edible Rewards: An ERP Study. Brain and Cognition, 196, 106442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2026.106442