Dietary restraint and impulsivity modulate neural responses to food in adolescents with obesity and healthy adolescents

Abstract

Objective: Despite alarming prevalence rates, surprisingly little is known about neural mechanisms underlying eating behavior in juveniles with obesity. To simulate reactivity to modern food environments, event-related potentials (ERP) to appetizing food images (relative to control images) were recorded in adolescents with obesity and healthy adolescents. Methods: Thirty-four adolescents with obesity (patients) and 24 matched healthy control adolescents watched and rated standardized food and object images during ERP recording. Personality (impulsivity) and eating styles (trait craving and dietary restraint) were assessed as potential moderators. Results: Food relative to object images triggered larger early (P100) and late (P300) ERPs. More impulsive individuals had considerably larger food-specific P100 amplitudes in both groups. Controls with higher restraint scores showed reduced food-specific P300 amplitudes and subjective palatability ratings whereas patients with higher restraint scores showed increased P300 and palatability ratings.Conclusions: This first ERP study in adolescents with obesity and controls revealed impulsivity as a general risk factor in the current obesogenic environment by increasing food-cue salience. Dietary restraint showed paradoxical effects in patients, making them more vulnerable to visual food-cues. Salutogenic therapeutic approaches that deemphasize strict dietary restraint and foster healthy food choice might reduce such paradoxical effects.

Reduced neural responses to food cues might contribute to the anorexigenic effect of acute exercise observed in obese but not lean adolescents

“…In their study, participants were adult women and their dietary status (restrained or unrestrained) was not assessed, which may explain some of these discrepancies. In another study, Hofmann and collaborators found increased neural responses to food cues in obese compared with lean adolescents, but the obese sample was defined as restrained while the lean sample was defined as unrestrained according to DEBQ scores [23]. In the present work, both lean and obese adolescents were categorized as unrestrained.…”

Emotional eating and instructed food-cue processing in adolescents: An ERP study

“…Previous studies in adults have shown similar food-cue biases for the P3 and LPP (Meule et al, 2013; Nijs et al, 2008; Nijs, Muris, et al, 2010). In adolescents, the only relevant study we found was that of Hofmann and colleagues (Hofmann et al, 2015), who found an enhanced P3 for food versus object cues, with participants being a combination of healthy controls and obese counterparts. The current study confirmed that, similar to adults, adolescents exhibit enhanced P3 and LPP amplitudes towards food cues versus nonfood cues, reflecting preferential processing of food cues.…”

“…However, only a handful of studies have examined the brain-based correlates of the onset of problematic eating behavior during adolescence. P3 amplitude to food cues was found to be positively correlated with restrictive feeding practices in children (Hill, Wu, Crowley, & Fearon, 2013) and restrained eating scores in obese adolescents (Hofmann, Ardelt-Gattinger, Paulmichl, Weghuber, & Blechert, 2015). Additionally, enlarged P3 and LPP amplitudes to food cues were found in adolescents with anorexia nervosa compared to the control group (Novosel et al, 2014).…”

Acute post-exercise energy and macronutrient intake in lean and obese youth: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Some recent studies effectively pointed out the role of weight status and body composition on the neural control of energy intake, with higher neural responses to food cues observed in overweight/obese youth compared with lean once (37,38). 360…”