Motivational and neural correlates of self-control of eating: A combined neuroimaging and experience sampling study in dieting female college students

Abstract

Self-regulation is a critical ability for maintaining a wide range of health behaviors, especially in preventing overeating and weight gain. Previous work has identified various threats to self-control in the eating domain, chief among which are desire strength and negative affect. In the present study, we examined individual differences in college-aged dieters’ experiences of these threats as they encountered temptations to eat in their daily lives, and tested whether these differences characterized sub-groups of dieters with divergent self-control outcomes. Specifically, 75 dieting females (age range: 18-23) participated in a combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and experience sampling study. Participants passively viewed food cues during an fMRI session, and then reported their daily eating behaviors for one week via ecological momentary assessment. We examined the characteristics of dieters who exhibited the most favorable combination of the aforementioned factors (i.e., low desire strength and positive mood) and who were thus most successful at regulating their eating. These dieters endorsed more autonomous reasons for their self-regulatory goals, and during the food cue reactivity task more readily recruited the inferior frontal gyrus, a brain region associated with inhibitory control. We suggest that these motivational and neural correlates may also be implicated in self-regulation of other important health behaviors.

Implicit reappraisal as an emotional buffer: Reappraisal-related neural activity moderates the relationship between inattention and perceived stress during exposure to negative stimuli

“…Proceeding with this assumption, reappraisal brain region expression may Bpump the breaksô n the relationship between attention deficits and perceived stress in the present study. Indeed, in the eating domain, the extent to which dieters spontaneously recruited ventrolateral PFC during exposure to appetizing food cues was associated with better self-regulatory outcomes (Lopez, Milyavskaya, Hofmann, & Heatherton, 2016).…”

Motivation: key to a healthy lifestyle in people with diabetes? Current and emerging knowledge and applications

“…Conversely, higher activity in the caudate nucleus and frontal pole regions, involved in craving and reward instead of cognitive control, was related to more chocolate intake in this exposed group [39]. Motivation is rarely studied in this context, but one study showed that young adult women without diabetes who were successful, compared with those unsuccessful in regulating their dietary behaviour had more intrinsic and autonomous reasons, and showed more motivation for self-regulation [40]. Neuroanatomically, those successful women showed more activity in the inferior frontal cortex compared with their less successful counterparts when looking at food pictures.…”

Neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and population health: the neuroscience of chronic disease prevention

“…82 More recently, Lopez and colleagues extended these findings in a sample of dieters, demonstrating that greater recruitment of the lateral PFC during food cue exposure was prospectively associated with real-world dieting success measured during a week of experience sampling. 96 Although much of this work is still new and focuses more on uncovering associations between brain and behavior rather than building truly predictive models (i.e., out-of-sample prediction), these studies nevertheless represent an exciting new avenue of research that suggests potential "neuromarkers" that may be used to predict future health outcomes ( Fig. 2).…”