Sweet lies: neural, visual, and behavioral measures reveal a lack of self-control conflict during food choice in weight-concerned women

Abstract

Despite their intentions, weight-concerned individuals generally fail to control their eating behavior. However, it is unknown whether this failure is due to a lack of effortful self-control, or to not experiencing an internal conflict between weight goals and food temptations. The present study used fMRI, eye tracking and reaction times to assess the degree of conflict experienced by weight-concerned women during food choices that posed either a self-control dilemma (i.e., requiring a choice between healthy and palatable foods), or not. Contrary to the common assumption in self-control theory that food choices posing a self-control dilemma evoke internal conflict, we found that choices requiring self-control induced no conflict, as demonstrated by lower reaction times, fixation durations, number of gaze switches between snacks, and lower activation of the anterior cingulate cortex. Our results suggest that self-control failure might be due to a lack of experienced conflict, rather than to failing to act upon the perception of such conflict. This implies that effectiveness of weight maintenance interventions might be improved if they also focus on increasing the ability to detect a self-control dilemma, in addition to the current focus on increasing self-regulatory capacity.

Food craving, food choice and consumption: The role of impulsivity and sham-controlled tDCS stimulation of the right dlPFC

“…Furthermore, while our food decision task is-in principle-very sensitive to conflictive decisions (by yielding several process tracing measures), it was not optimized to induce a conflict between calorie density and palatability (i.e., where participants had to overrule their palatability preference for a low caloric option). Other researchers have optimized food decision tasks for the examination of such conflicts in weight-concerned individuals (e.g., van der Laan, de Ridder, Charbonnier, Viergever, & Smeets, 2014). Thus, inhibitory effects and associated tDCS stimulation effects might have been clearer when preselecting individuals on restrained eating and/or individually optimizing choice trials for self-regulation conflicts.…”

Altered frontal inter-hemispheric resting state functional connectivity is associated with bulimic symptoms among restrained eaters

“…Instead, task-based fMRI studies have been the main thrust of RE neuroimaging studies (Burger & Stice, 2011;Coletta et al, 2009;Schur et al, 2012;van der Laan et al, 2014).…”

Good practice in food-related neuroimaging

“…Aside from these situational factors, functional MRI food choice tasks are generally highly simplified, showing (cut-out) images on a plain background, and are thus very different from the real-life food choice environment (109)(110)(111)(112)(113). Situational and taskrelated factors combined might result in very different choices in fMRI research than in real life.…”