Attentional Conflict Moderates the Association Between Anxiety and Emotional Eating Behavior: An ERP Study

Relationship between emotional eating and nutritional intake in adult women with overweight and obesity: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Emotional eating (EE) is particularly prevalent in overweight or obese women, who may turn to food as a way to cope with stress, sadness, or anxiety. Limited research has been conducted on the association between EE and nutritional intake. Therefore, present study was designed to explore this association in adult women with overweight and obesity.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional study, the relationship between EE and nutritional intake in 303 overweight and obese women (aged 18-50 years) was examined. The researchers used the validated semi-quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) to assess participants' nutritional intake and the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ) to evaluate their eating behavior. To determine the association between EE and nutritional intake, we employed the multiple linear regression analysis.

RESULTS

The frequency of high intensity EE was 64.4% among the study participants and the mean total score of EE subscale of DBEQ was 2.32 ± 0.81. The total score of EE was positively associated with the energy intake (β = 0.396, P = 0.007), even after adjusting for age and BMI. In addition, a significant inverse association was found between the score of EE and the daily intake of calcium (β= -0.219, P = 0.026), riboflavin (β= -0.166, P = 0.043), and vitamin B12 (β= -0.271, P = 0.035), independent from energy and age. Also the results showed a significant positive association between the score of EE and the frequency of daily intake of cracker, muffin, cake, cream cake, pastry, candy, ice cream, pickles, melon, hydrogenated vegetable oil, peanut, salted and roasted seeds, and corn-cheese puff snack.

CONCLUSION

This study found that overweight or obese women with higher intensity of EE might have a higher intake of energy and a lower intake of dietary calcium, riboflavin and vitamin B12. Integrating a balanced diet with psychotherapy is suggested to help individuals with EE reducing the urge to eat in response to emotions.

Effect of Taste-Induced Mood on ERP and Emotional Assessment of Images

Tastes affect the body and our emotions. We used tasteless, sweet, and bitter stimuli to induce participants' moods, and we examined the effect of mood on an emotional evaluation of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images using event-related potentials, N2, N400, and late positive potential (LPP), which reflect emotional evaluation in the brain. The results indicated that mood valence was most positive for sweetness and most negative for bitterness. Moreover, there was no significant mood effect on subjective valence ratings of emotional images. Furthermore, the N2 amplitude, which is related to the early semantic processing of preceding stimuli, was unaffected by the taste induced mood. In contrast, we found that the N400 amplitude, which is related to the mismatch of emotional valence between stimuli, increased significantly for unpleasant images when participants were in a positive rather than negative mood state. Also, the LPP amplitude, which is related to the emotional valence of images, showed only the main effect of the images' emotional valence. The N2's results suggest that the early semantic processing of taste stimuli might have had a negligible impact on emotional evaluation because taste stimuli minimize semantic processing that accompanies mood induction. In contrast, the N400 reflected the effects of the induced mood, and the LPP reflected the impact of the valence of emotional images. The use of taste stimuli to induce mood revealed different brain processing of taste-induced mood effects on emotional evaluation, including N2's involvement in semantic processing, N400's involvement in matching emotions between mood and stimuli, and LPP's involvement in subjective evaluations of stimuli.

Negative urgency as a risk factor for hazardous alcohol use: Dual influences of cognitive control and reinforcement processing

Negative Urgency (NU) is a prominent risk factor for hazardous alcohol use. While research has helped elucidate how NU relates to neurobiological functioning with respect to alcohol use, no known work has contextualized such functioning within existing neurobiological theories in addiction. Therefore, we elucidated mechanisms contributing to the NU-hazardous alcohol use relationship by combining NU theories with neurobiological dual models of addiction, which posit addiction is related to cognitive control and reinforcement processing. Fifty-five undergraduates self-reported NU and hazardous alcohol use. We recorded EEG while participants performed a reinforced flanker task. We measured cognitive control using N2 activation time-locked to the incongruent flanker stimulus, and we measured reinforcement processing using the feedback-related negativity (FRN) time-locked to better-than-expected negative reinforcement feedback. We modeled hazardous drinking using hierarchical regression, with NU, N2, and FRN plus their interactions as predictors. The regression model significantly predicted hazardous alcohol use, and the three-way interaction (NU × N2 × FRN) significantly improved model fit. In the context of inefficient processing (i.e., larger N2s and FRNs), NU demonstrated a strong relationship with hazardous alcohol use. In the context of efficient processing (i.e., smaller N2s and FRNs), NU was unrelated to hazardous alcohol use. Control analyses ruled out the potential impact of other impulsivity subscales, individual differences in dimensional negative affect or anxiety, and use of substances other than alcohol, and post hoc specificity analyses showed that this effect was driven primarily by heavy drinking, rather than frequency of drinking. This analysis provides preliminary evidence that brain mechanisms of cognitive control and reinforcement processing influence the relationship between NU and hazardous alcohol use, and confirms a specific influence of negative reinforcement processing. Future clinical research could leverage these neurobiological moderators for substance misuse treatment.

Emotional eating among Lebanese adults: scale validation, prevalence and correlates

OBJECTIVES

The present study aimed at developing an Arabic version of the Emotional Eating Scale (EES) and examining its reliability and validity among a sample of the Lebanese population. The secondary objective was to evaluate the correlation between emotional eating and body dissatisfaction along with depression and/or self-esteem among a representative sample of the Lebanese population.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study was conducted between January and May 2018. The sample was drawn proportionately from all Lebanese Mohafazat.

RESULTS

All items could be extracted from the list, except items 17 and 19. The EES items converged over a solution of four factors that had an Eigenvalue over 1, explaining a total of 67.06% of the variance (KMO = 0.939; Bartlett's test of sphericity p < 0.001; α_Cronbach = 0.952). A higher body dissatisfaction was significantly associated with higher emotional eating (β = 0.31) and lower self-esteem (β =  - 0.054); however, no significant association was found with depression. Self-esteem and depression were not found to be significantly associated with emotional eating. When introducing depression and self-esteem as mediator factors for body dissatisfaction and emotional eating, body dissatisfaction did not remain significantly associated with emotional eating.

CONCLUSION

In this study, the Emotional Eating Scale was validated in Arabic among the Lebanese adult population, making this scale usable in further Lebanese research. Moreover, our results showed that body dissatisfaction was positively correlated with emotional eating and self-esteem, but not with depression. A positive association between body dissatisfaction and emotional eating was also demonstrated. This research offers new perspectives for the evaluation of emotional eating among the Lebanese adult population.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Level V Cross-sectional descriptive study.

Neural Correlates of Attentional Bias to Food Stimuli in Obese Adolescents

Adolescent obesity is an increasingly prevalent problem in several societies. Researchers have begun to focus on neurocognitive processes that may help explain how unhealthy food habits form and are maintained. The present study compared attentional bias to food stimuli in a sample of obese (n = 22) and Normal-weight (n = 18) adolescents utilizing an Attention Blink (AB) paradigm while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. We found lower accuracy and Event-Related Potential (ERP) P3 amplitudes during the presentation of food stimuli in AB trials for obese adolescents. These findings suggest an impaired ability of their brains to flexibly relocate attentional resources in the face of food stimuli. The results were corroborated by lower P3s also being associated with higher body mass index (BMI) values and poorer self-reported self-efficacy in controlling food intake. The study is among the few examining neural correlates of attentional control in obese adolescents and suggests automatic attentional bias to food is an important aspect to consider in tackling the obesity crisis.

Delta phase reset predicts conflict-related changes in P3 amplitude and behavior

When multiple competing responses are activated, we respond more slowly than if only one response is activated (response conflict). Conflict-induced slowing is reduced for consecutive high-conflict stimuli, an effect known as conflict adaptation. Verguts and Notebaert's (2009) adaptation by binding theory suggests this is due to Hebbian learning of cognitive control, potentiated by the response of the locus coeruleus norepinephrine (NE) system. Phasic activity of the NE system can potentially be measured non-invasively in humans by recording the P3 component of the event-related potential (ERP), and the P3 is sensitive to conflict adaptation. Bouret and Sara's (2005) network reset theory suggests that phasic NE might functionally reset ongoing large-scale network activity, generating synchronous neural population activity like the P3. To examine the possibility that network reset contributes to conflict effects in the P3, we recorded high-density EEG data while subjects performed a flanker task. As expected, conflict and conflict adaptation modulated P3 amplitudes. Brain-behavior correlation analyses indicated that activity during the rise of the P3 was related to RT and predicted RT differences due to conflict. More importantly, phase of delta oscillations not only predicted reaction time differences between low-conflict and high-conflict conditions, but delta phase reset also predicted the amplitude of the P3. Delta oscillations exhibited dominant peaks both pre and post-stimulus, and delta at stimulus onset predicted the post-stimulus ERP, in particular the N2 and P3. This result bridges human EEG with basic mechanisms suggested by computational neural models and invasive patient recordings, namely that salient cognitive events might reset ongoing oscillations leading to the generation of the phase-locked evoked potential. We conclude that partial phase reset is a cortical mechanism involved in monitoring the environment for unexpected events, and this response contributes to conflict effects in the ERP. These results are in line with theories that phasic NE release might reset ongoing cortical activity, leading to the generation of ERP components like the P3.

Emotion regulation difficulties and impaired working memory interact to predict boredom emotional eating

Emotional eating (EE), or eating in response to emotions, is related to depression, binge eating, and weight gain. Emotion regulation difficulties are a risk factor for EE. Working memory deficits may also be a risk factor for EE, as working memory is an important cognitive factor in emotion regulation. The current study is a secondary analysis that examined whether working memory moderated the relationship between emotion regulation and emotional eating. A college student sample completed measures of EE in response to depression, boredom, and anxiety/anger (Emotional Eating Scale), emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale) and a working memory task (AOSPAN). Moderated regression analyses were conducted. Conditional moderation was observed, such that greater emotion regulation difficulties were associated with boredom EE, when working memory was one standard deviation (SD) below average. Moderation analyses were not significant when examining associations between working memory, emotion regulation difficulties, and depression and anxiety EE. Findings suggest that the correlates of boredom EE may be different than depression and anxiety/anger EE. Although the current study was cross-sectional, it is possible that individuals with poorer working memory and emotion regulation difficulties, especially in tandem, may be at increased risk for boredom EE.