Cognitive control over visual food cue saliency is greater in reduced-overweight/obese but not in weight relapsed women : an EEG study

Objective: Poor weight management may relate to a reduction in neurobehavioural control over food intake and heightened reactivity of the brain's neural reward pathways. Here we explore the neurophysiology of food-related visual cue processing in weight reduced and weight relapsed women by assessing differences in cortical arousal and attentional processing using a food-Stroop paradigm. Methods: 51 women were recruited into 4 groups: reduced-weight participants (RED, n = 14) compared to BMI matched low-weight controls (LW-CTL, n = 18); and weight relapsed participants (REL, n = 10) compared to BMI matched high-weight controls (HW-CTL, n = 9). Eating behaviour and body image questionnaires were completed. Two Stroop tasks (one containing food images, the other containing neutral images) were completed with record of electroencephalography (EEG). Results: Differences in cortical arousal were found in RED versus LW-CTL women, and were seen during food task execution only. Compared to their controls, RED women exhibited lower relative delta band power (p=0.01) and higher relative beta band power (p=0.01) over the right frontal cortex (F<inf>4</inf>). Within the RED group, delta band oscillations correlated positively with self-reported habitual fat intake and with body shape dissatisfaction. Conclusions: As compared to women matched for phenotype but with no history of weight reduction, reduced-overweight/obese women show increased neurobehavioural control over external food cues and the inhibition of reward-orientated feeding responses. Insight into these self-regulatory mechanisms which attenuate food cue saliency may aid in the development of cognitive remediation therapies which facilitate long-term weight loss.