Validation of a transdiagnostic psychopathology ecological momentary assessment protocol in a university student sample.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) collects real-time data in daily life, enhancing ecological validity and reducing recall bias. An EMA questionnaire that measures symptoms and transdiagnostic factors was recently developed with network modeling purposes. This study examines this EMA protocol's (a) subjective experience (e.

The impact of dietary claims on behaviour: Expectations qualify how actual satiety affects cognitive performance.

Dietary choices significantly impact health and daily cognitive performance, prompting various recommendations for eating habits. Whereas much research has focused on the effects of actual satiety on cognitive performance, the influence of expectations regarding effects of satiety on performance remains underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by examining how the expectation of satiety influences cognitive outcomes, building on existing findings that highlight the role of placebo effects in shaping eating behaviour.

Developing a transdiagnostic Ecological Momentary Assessment protocol for psychopathology.

Objectives: The network approach to psychopathology posits that mental disorders emerge from dynamic interactions among psychopathology-relevant variables. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is frequently used to assess these variables in daily life. Considering the transdiagnostic nature of the network approach to psychopathology, this study describes the development of a transdiagnostic EMA protocol for psychopathology.

Functional MRI activation of the nucleus tractus solitarius after taste stimuli at ultra-high field: a proof-of-concept single-subject study.

Using ultra-high field (7 Tesla) functional MRI (fMRI), we conducted the first functional neuroimaging study of the normal human brainstem specifically designed to examine neural signals in the Nucleus Tractus Solitarius (NTS) in response to all basic taste stimuli. NTS represents the first relay station along the mammalian taste processing pathway which originates at the taste buds in the oral cavity and passes through the thalamus before reaching the primary taste cortex in the brain. In our proof-of-concept study, we acquired data from one adult volunteer using fMRI at 1.

Effects of a health versus hedonic mindset on daily-life snacking behaviour.

Background: In today's obesogenic environment high-caloric palatable foods are omnipresent, making it hard for many to reach and maintain a healthy body weight. This study investigates the effects of a health versus hedonic mindset on daily-life snacking behaviour. The hypothesis is that a health mindset leads to reduced snacking behaviour compared to a hedonic mindset.

A smartphone application as a personalized treatment tool for adolescents with overweight: an explorative qualitative study.

Background: The present study is the first step of a 3-year European project in which a tailored smartphone application will be developed and tested as a potential tool in the personalized treatment of children and adolescents with overweight.

Methods: In this study, 10 focus groups (n = 48 participants) were conducted in Belgium, The Netherlands and France with adolescents with overweight (12-16 years; n = 30) and parents of adolescents with overweight (n = 18) to investigate their perceptions on (un)healthy behavior, the drivers of these behaviors, and the needs of an eHealth application for weight loss. A thorough thematic analysis was performed using Nvivo12.

It is a matter of perspective: Attentional focus rather than dietary restraint drives brain responses to food stimuli.

Brain responses to food are thought to reflect food's rewarding value and to fluctuate with dietary restraint. We propose that brain responses to food are dynamic and depend on attentional focus. Food pictures (high-caloric/low-caloric, palatable/unpalatable) were presented during fMRI-scanning, while attentional focus (hedonic/health/neutral) was induced in 52 female participants varying in dietary restraint.

Food Captures Attention, but Not the Eyes: An Eye-Tracking Study on Mindset and BMI's Impact on Attentional Capture by High-Caloric Visual Food Stimuli.

Obesity is a worldwide pandemic and theories propose that attentional bias (AB) for food triggers craving and overeating, especially for people with obesity. However, empirical evidence is inconsistent, which may be due to methodological diversity and the double-sided nature of high-caloric palatable foods. That is, these foods simultaneously have a high hedonic and a low health value.

Effects of Mindset and Dietary Restraint on Attention Bias for Food and Food Intake.

Evidence for attention bias (AB) for food in restrained eaters is inconsistent. A person's mindset related to food - that is, whether someone focuses on the hedonic or health aspects of food - might be an overlooked influence on AB for food, possibly explaining the inconsistency in the literature. Fluctuations between a hedonic versus a health mindset might be strongest in restrained eaters, who have a conflicted relationship with food.

More complex than you might think: Neural representations of food reward value in obesity.

Obesity reached pandemic proportions and weight-loss treatments are mostly ineffective. The level of brain activity in the reward circuitry is proposed to be proportionate to the reward value of food stimuli, and stronger in people with obesity. However, empirical evidence is inconsistent.

A new science of mental disorders: Using personalised, transdiagnostic, dynamical systems to understand, model, diagnose and treat psychopathology.

The core ideas of a 10-year research program 'New Science of Mental Disorders' are outlined. This research program moves away from the disorder-based 'one-model-fits-all' approach to treating mental disorders, and adopts the network approach to psychopathology as its foundation of research. Its core assumption is that dynamically interacting symptoms constitute the disorder.

Effects of mindset on hormonal responding, neural representations, subjective experience and intake.

A person can alternate between food-related mindsets, which in turn may depend on one's emotional state or situation. Being in a certain mindset can influence food-related thoughts, but interestingly it might also affect eating-related physiological responses. The current study investigates the influence of an induced 'loss of control' mindset as compared to an 'in control' mindset on hormonal, neural and behavioural responses to chocolate stimuli.

Fluctuations in attentional bias for food and the role of executive control.

Research has shown repeatedly that overweight and obesity are associated with more fluctuations in attentional bias (AB), as reflected in trial-level bias scores (TL-BS). More specifically, people with a high BMI more frequently alternate their attention towards and away from food over time. The current study proposed and tested a model on the mechanism behind the positive association between variability of AB for food and BMI.

Food Palatability Directs Our Eyes Across Contexts.

It is often believed that attentional bias (AB) for food is a stable trait of certain groups, like restrained eaters. However, empirical evidence from this domain is inconsistent. High-calorie foods are double-faceted, as they are both a source of reward and of weight/health concern.

Neural Correlates of Food Cue Exposure Intervention for Obesity: A Case-Series Approach.

Background: People with overweight have stronger reactivity (e.g., subjective craving) to food cues than lean people, and this reactivity is positively associated with food intake.

Tackling sabotaging cognitive processes to reduce overeating; expectancy violation during food cue exposure.

Calorie-reduced diets to combat obesity do work, but they only work when one sticks to the diet and the - relatively small - weight loss usually is short-lived. It is argued that calorie-reduced diets should converge with enduring lifestyle changes: the diet is just the start of a lifelong new eating pattern. Getting people to change their lifestyles forever could increase the amount of lost weight and prevent relapse.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy Versus Cognitive Therapy for Depression: How They Work, How Long, and for Whom-Key Findings From an RCT.

Objective: Although the effectiveness of interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) and cognitive therapy (CT) for major depression has been established, little is known about how and for whom they work and how they compare in the long term. The latter is especially relevant for IPT because research on its long-term effects has been limited. This overview paper summarizes findings from a Dutch randomized controlled trial on the effects and mechanisms of change of IPT versus CT for major depression.

Power of mind: Attentional focus rather than palatability dominates neural responding to visual food stimuli in females with overweight.

Research investigating neural responses to visual food stimuli has produced inconsistent results. Crucially, high-caloric palatable foods have a double-sided nature - they are often craved but are also considered unhealthy - which may have contributed to the inconsistency in the literature. Taking this double-sided nature into account in the current study, neural responses to individually tailored palatable and unpalatable high caloric food stimuli were measured, while participants' (females with overweight: n = 23) attentional focus was manipulated to be either hedonic or neutral.

Reduced automatic approach tendencies towards task-relevant and task-irrelevant food pictures in Anorexia Nervosa.

Background And Objectives: Anorexia Nervosa (AN) patients are characterized by an excessive restriction of their food-intake. Prior research using an Affective Simon Task (AST) with food as a task-irrelevant feature, provided evidence for the view that AN patients' ability to refrain from food is facilitated by reduced automatic approach tendencies towards food. However, because food was task-irrelevant (i.

Exposure therapy vs lifestyle intervention to reduce food cue reactivity and binge eating in obesity: A pilot study.

Background And Objectives: Learning models of overeating predict that exposure therapy is effective in reducing food cue reactivity and overeating. This pilot study tested an eight-session exposure therapy aimed at inhibitory learning vs. an active control condition aimed at lifestyle improvement for obesity (treatment-as-usual).

Test-retest reliability of attention bias for food: Robust eye-tracking and reaction time indices.

This study assessed internal reliability and test-retest reliability of attention bias scores for food derived from the dot probe task. A visual dot probe task with food and non-food pictures (presented for 3000 ms) was administered to 53 healthy women on two occasions. Attention bias scores for food were calculated based on manual response latencies (reaction time bias) and concurrent assessment of eye-movements (direction bias and dwell-time bias).

Dynamics of attentional bias for food in adults, children, and restrained eaters.

Objective: Empirical evidence of attentional bias (AB) for food in obese and restrained eaters is contradictory. It has been suggested that AB for food in obese people might reflect both food craving and food-related concerns. Thus, AB for food may be a dynamic process.

Effect of dietary restraint and mood state on attentional processing of food cues.

Background And Objectives: Research linking dietary restraint to attentional bias toward food cues has been equivocal, suggesting that dietary restraint may only influence attentional processing of food in certain contexts. The present study examined whether negative mood strengthens the association between dietary restraint and attention bias for food.

Methods: Healthy female participants were randomized to either a neutral (n = 47) or negative mood (n = 49) induction.