Greater mindful eating practice is associated with better reversal learning

Abstract

1Mindfulness-based interventions are thought to reduce compulsive behavior such as overeating by promoting behavioral flexibility. Here the main aim was to provide support for mindfulness-mediated improvements in reversal learning, a direct measure of behavioral flexibility. We investigated whether an 8-week mindful eating intervention improved outcome-based reversal learning relative to an educational cooking (i.e., active control) intervention in a non-clinical population. Sixty-five healthy participants with a wide BMI range (19-35 kg/m 2 ), who were motivated to change their eating habits, performed a deterministic reversal learning task that enabled the investigation of reward-and punishment-based reversal learning at baseline and following the intervention. No group differences in reversal learning were observed. However, time invested in the mindful eating, but not the educational cooking intervention correlated positively with changes in reversal learning, in a manner independent of outcome valence. These findings suggest that greater amount of mindfulness practice can lead to increased behavioral flexibility, which, in turn, might help overcome compulsive eating in clinical populations.Mindfulness has been associated with a multitude of beneficial health outcomes 1,2 and improvements in cognition 3 in clinical as well as non-clinical populations. Mindfulness is defined as paying attention to present moment experience, purposefully and non-judgmentally 4 . Shapiro and colleagues 5 have proposed that practicing mindfulness may lead to reperceiving, or deautomization, and suggest that one direct mechanism of action underlying the beneficial effects of mindfulness-based interventions may be increased cognitive, emotional and behavioral flexibility. Some studies have indeed shown a mindfulness-mediated increase in the ability to inhibit automatic responses, as measured with classic or emotional Stroop tasks [6][7][8] , which has been interpreted as evidence for increased cognitive flexibility. However, studies investigating cognitive flexibility with paradigms that require attention switching have not shown effects of mindfulness 9,10 . No studies to date have investigated the effects of mindfulness on reward-based flexibility such as reversal learning.Reversal learning requires the ability to flexibly adapt one's behavior in response to outcome-contingency changes in the environment and is highly relevant in the context of compulsive behavior such as addiction 11 or overeating (i.e., consuming more energy than is expended). Although occasional overeating is a common phenomenon in our obesogenic environment, chronic overeating often results in obesity. Recent theory suggests that, rather than hyper-or hyposensitivity to food rewards, obesity may be related to impaired outcome-based learning [12][13][14] . Impaired reward and punishment learning may maintain overeating in obesity by leading to compulsive over-selection of actions directed at food rewards and/or decreased sensitivity to negative consequences a...

The effects of an 8-week mindful eating intervention on anticipatory reward responses in striatum and midbrain

“…Participants also performed a food Stroop task inside the scanner, followed by a reversal learning and outcome devaluation task outside the scanner. These data are reported elsewhere 28,39,40 . One year after the intervention, participants were re-invited to the laboratory to reassess anthropometric measurements of obesity (weight, waist and hip circumference) and the self-report questionnaires as administered on pre- and post-test sessions.…”

“…The results reported in this study are based on data from 58 healthy, right-handed participants (48 women; mean age: 31.6, SD: 11.0, range: 19 – 52 years; mean body mass index (BMI): 26.0, SD: 3.68, range: 19.7 – 34.7 kg/m2). Note that this sample is largely overlapping with the sample reported previously for another task 28 . Participants were recruited from Nijmegen and surroundings through advertisement.…”

“…Crucially, subjects with previous MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) or MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) experience were excluded from the study. Exclusion criteria are further detailed in Janssen et al 28 .…”

“…Reward anticipation was not re-assessed at one-year follow-up. The procedure is further detailed in 28 .…”

What Should I Eat and Why? The Environmental, Genetic, and Behavioral Determinants of Food Choice: Summary from a Pennington Scientific Symposium

“…In our obesogenic environment, attention and awareness of food cues and food‐related decisions are important for maintaining goal‐directed decision‐making during episodes of food intake, which was shown to be compromised in obesity (33). Recent work has demonstrated improvements in outcome‐based learning as a function of mindful eating training, which increases awareness and attention to eating behavior (34). Interestingly, patients with narcolepsy, a condition resulting from deficits in arousal and attention caused by lack of hypocretin/orexin in the lateral hypothalamus, have increased neural activity in reward regions of the brain when distracted by food cues and deficits in goal‐directed decision‐making relative to BMI‐matched controls (35,36).…”