title: Impulse control and restrained eating among young women: Evidence for compensatory cortical activation during a chocolate-specific delayed discounting task.
abstract: Theory and associated research indicate that people with elevated restrained eating (RE) scores have higher risk for binge eating, future bulimic symptom onset and weight gain. Previous imaging studies have suggested hyper-responsive reward brain area activation in response to food cues contributes to this risk but little is known about associated neural impulse control mechanisms, especially when considering links between depleted cognitive resources related to unsuccessful RE. Towards illuminating this issue, we used a chocolate-specific delayed discounting (DD) task to investigate relations between RE scores, behavior impulsivity, and corresponding neural impulse control correlates in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of 27 young women. Specifically, participants were required to choose between more immediate, smaller versus delayed, larger hypothetical chocolate rewards following initial consumption of a chocolate. As predicted, RE scores were correlated positively with behavior impulse control levels. More critically, higher RE scores were associated with stronger activation in impulse control region, the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the completion of difficult decision trials reflecting higher cognitive demands and resource depletion relative to easy decision trials. Exploratory analyses revealed a positive correlation between RE scores and activity in a reward system hub, the right striatum. Moreover, a positive correlation between left DLPFC and striatum activation was posited to reflect, in part, impulse control region compensation in response to stronger reward signal among women with RE elevations. Findings suggested impulse control lapses may contribute to difficulties in maintaining RE, particularly when cognitive demands are high.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. Electronic address: debo.dong@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Debo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: lingzhen1314gogo@163.com.
authors.forename: Yulin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau 999078, China. Electronic address: toddjackson@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Todd
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jackson
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: chenshuaiyu3@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Shuaiyu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: wangyu.swu@foxmail.com.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. Electronic address: fengzhou.uestc@outlook.com.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China. Electronic address: chenhg@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D015992:Body Mass Index; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D031204:Caloric Restriction / Q000523:psychology*; D000069956:Chocolate; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D065786:Delay Discounting; D004435:Eating / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000523:psychology; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D015430:Weight Gain; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Compensatory effect; DLPFC; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Impulse-control; Restrained eating