Pilot study of food-specific go/no-go training for overweight individuals: brain imaging data suggest inhibition shapes food evaluation

Abstract

Food-specific go/no-go training might reduce overeating and facilitate weight loss. In this pilot study, we examined whether a food-specific go/no-go training over five weeks, as compared to a non-food-specific training, could produce changes in behavioral and neural responses to food images and body weight. Here, we used a sample of 51 overweight participants divided into training and control groups whose brain activity and food evaluation were measured before and after the training. Compared with the control group, in the training group we found significant reductions in high-calorie food evaluation. We also found lower activations in inhibitory control-, and reward-related brain regions in response to high-calorie food images. Further, activation change of the mid insula in response to the high-calorie food images was positively associated with change in the evaluation of those images. However, we found no evidence for a significant effect of food-specific go/no-go training on body weight change. Our findings highlight that food-specific go/no-go training in overweight individuals can reduce high-calorie food evaluation, but also neural activations in inhibitory control-, and reward- related brain regions.

Food-Specific Inhibition Training for Food Devaluation: A Meta-Analysis

“…The food devaluation effect observed in the meta-analysis is supported by recent neuroimaging studies [ 14 , 67 ]. More specifically, researchers have found that, compared with changes observed in controls, food-specific inhibition training reduces activation in reward regions of the brain (e.g., putamen, mid-insula) in response to no-go/stop food images.…”

“…Our search identified 24 eligible studies (total m = 24) [ 14 , 17 , 26 , 30 , 34 , 35 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ], 36 independent samples (total k = 36), and a total of 3032 participants (total N = 3032). A complete list of studies and their characteristics can be seen in Table 1 .…”

“…Fortunately, many of the studies considered in this meta-analysis used open-source statistics and shared their raw data on many websites, such as the Open Science Framework. Based on these shared data [ 14 , 34 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ], we conducted a mini meta-analysis to calculate the “true” correlation, and the correlation was accordingly set at r = 0.78.…”

“… The effects of food-specific inhibition training on food evaluation [ 14 , 17 , 26 , 30 , 34 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ]. …”

“…Critically, in a task aimed specifically at retraining particular behaviors (e.g., responses to high-calorie food cues), the no-go cue is disproportionately paired with high-calorie food items (e.g., 100%). In a control task, however, go and no-go cues are usually paired equally with non-food items [ 14 ].…”