Training response inhibition to food is associated with weight loss and reduced energy intake

Abstract

The majority of adults in the UK and US are overweight or obese due to multiple factors including excess energy intake. Training people to inhibit simple motor responses (key presses) to high-energy density food pictures reduces intake in laboratory studies. We examined whether online response inhibition training reduced real-world food consumption and weight in a community sample of adults who were predominantly overweight or obese (N = 83). Participants were allocated in a randomised, double-blind design to receive four 10-min sessions of either active or control go/no-go training in which either high-energy density snack foods (active) or non-food stimuli (control) were associated with no-go signals. Participants' weight, energy intake (calculated from 24-h food diaries), daily snacking frequency and subjective food evaluations were measured for one week pre- and post-intervention. Participants also provided self-reported weight and monthly snacking frequency at pre-intervention screening, and one month and six months after completing the study. Participants in the active relative to control condition showed significant weight loss, reductions in daily energy intake and a reduction in rated liking of high-energy density (no-go) foods from the pre-to post-intervention week. There were no changes in self-reported daily snacking frequency. At longer-term follow-up, the active group showed significant reductions in self-reported weight at six months, whilst both groups reported significantly less snacking at one- and six-months. Excellent rates of adherence (97%) and positive feedback about the training suggest that this intervention is acceptable and has the potential to improve public health by reducing energy intake and overweight.

Training response inhibition to reduce food consumption: Mechanisms, stimulus specificity and appropriate training protocols

“…Similarly, results for implicit attitudes were largely in favour of the null hypothesis (Rouder, Speckman, Sun, Morey, & Iverson, 2009). These results are inconsistent with our predictions based on previous studies that have revealed significant effects of inhibitory control training on food consumption (Allom et al., 2015, Houben, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2015, Lawrence et al., 2015a, Lawrence et al., 2015b, Veling et al., 2011). They are also in disagreement with predictions based on other studies showing effects of alcohol-related go/no-go training on implicit attitudes towards alcohol (Houben et al., 2011, Houben et al., 2012a).…”

“…Our stop-signal training task had an overall stop-signal rate of 25%, and paired a target food, chocolate, with signals on 87.5% of trials. However, the inclusion of inter-block feedback to ensure that training placed demands on action cancellation, as opposed to action restraint (Eagle et al., 2008, Schachar et al., 2007; see above), is likely to have decreased the rate of successful inhibition (70%) compared with other training tasks where the rate of inhibition was much higher (average ∼92%; Houben, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2015, Lawrence et al., 2015a, Lawrence et al., 2015b, Veling et al., 2011). In a recent study Forman et al.…”

“…Unlike the stop-signal task, the go/no-go task presents the stimulus and the signal at the same time, and go/no-go training studies have paired no-go signals consistently with target foods (i.e. 100% mapping; Houben and Jansen, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2015, Lawrence et al., 2015b; van Koningsbruggen et al., 2014, Veling et al., 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2014). These differences are associated with higher probabilities of stopping than in the stop-signal task (∼98%; Jones et al., 2016) and are therefore likely to influence the strength of stimulus-stop response associations (Verbruggen and Logan, 2008a, Verbruggen and Logan, 2008b).…”

“…This has encouraged researchers to develop new behavioural interventions designed to target these processes. For example, recent studies have shown that training individuals to inhibit simple motor responses to images of food, using either the stop-signal or go/no-go tasks, can result in the decreased consumption of that food (Houben and Jansen, 2011, Houben and Jansen, 2015, Houben, 2011, Lawrence et al., 2015a, Veling et al., 2011), healthier food choices (Koningsbruggen et al., 2014, Veling et al., 2013a, Veling et al., 2013b) and even weight loss (Lawrence et al., 2015b, Veling et al., 2014). Three recent meta-analyses have demonstrated small to medium effect sizes for the effect of food-related inhibition training compared to control training (Allom et al., 2015, Jones et al., 2016; Turton, Bruidegom, Cardi, Hirsch, & Treasure, 2016).…”

Effects of the modern food environment on striatal function, cognition and regulation of ingestive behavior

“…Revealingly, many of these dopamine-dependent cognitive functions have been identified as risk factors for overeating [100–102], and even targets for behavioral interventions for obesity [103,104]. As such, pre-existing and/or diet-induced alterations in dopamine signaling may produce impairments in executive function, which may increase susceptibility for overeating and weight gain.…”