Watching Television While Eating Increases Food Intake: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Experimental Studies.

: Television viewing has been linked with increased weight and obesity, likely through decreased physical activity associated with sitting and viewing television, as well as increased intake of food, likely through reduced awareness of eating and intake behaviours. This review sought to determine the effects of television viewing on energy intake relative to the absence of television. : We adhered to the PRISMA guidelines and pre-registered this review in PROSPERO (CRD42023493092).

The use of driver screening tools to predict self-reported crashes and incidents in older drivers.

There is a clear need to identify older drivers at increased crash risk, without additional burden on the individual or licensing system. Brief off-road screening tools have been used to identify unsafe drivers and drivers at risk of losing their license. The aim of the current study was to evaluate and compare driver screening tools in predicting prospective self-reported crashes and incidents over 24 months in drivers aged 60 years and older.

Kynurenic acid as a biochemical factor underlying the association between Western-style diet and depression: A cross-sectional study.

Consumption of a Western-style diet (WS-diet), high in saturated fat and added sugar, is associated with increased depression risk. However, the physiological mechanisms underlying the relationship requires elucidation. Diet can alter tryptophan metabolism along the kynurenine pathway (KP), potentially linking inflammation and depression.

Factors Associated With Anxiety Symptoms in Australian Deaf or Hard of Hearing Children.

Deaf/deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children are at an increased risk of developing mental health problems, with growing evidence that they may experience greater anxiety symptoms than hearing peers. The present study investigated whether Australian children with varying degrees of hearing loss experienced increased anxiety symptoms compared to hearing children. Furthermore, we examined whether child anxiety symptoms were associated with known risk factors including psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression in parents, age at detection, early intervention and device fitting, type of hearing device, and peer problems.

Tracking Smell Loss to Identify Healthcare Workers with SARS-CoV-2 Infection.

Background: Healthcare workers (HCW) treating COVID-19 patients are at high risk for infection and may also spread infection through their contact with vulnerable patients. Smell loss has been associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, but it is unknown whether monitoring for smell loss can be used to identify asymptomatic infection among high risk individuals, like HCW.

Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study, tracking 473 HCW across three months to determine if smell loss could predict SARS-CoV-2 infection in this high-risk group.

Hippocampal-dependent appetitive control is impaired by experimental exposure to a Western-style diet.

Animals fed a Western-style diet (WS-diet) demonstrate rapid impairments in hippocampal function and poorer appetitive control. We examined if this also occurs in humans. One-hundred and ten healthy lean adults were randomized to either a one-week WS-diet intervention or a habitual-diet control group.

No evidence of flavour-nutrient learning in a two-week 'home exposure' study in humans.

Flavour-nutrient learning is robust in animals but remains elusive in humans. Recent evidence suggests flavour-nutrient learning may be more likely to occur with beverages that contain relatively few calories (compared to no calories), while others show that learned associations can influence satiation, without an effect on preference. The objective of this research was to determine whether acquired liking for a caloric drink could be observed in a 'home learning' context over 2 weeks, and whether it is impacted by viscosity.

Explicit wanting and liking for palatable snacks are differentially affected by change in physiological state, and differentially related to salivation and hunger.

Incentive salience theory (IST) suggests that 'wanting' and liking are dissociable processes. We argue that explicit measures of wanting in humans can reflect the impact of implicit 'wanting' as envisaged by IST, suggesting that dissociations should also be evident for explicit judgments of wanting and liking. To test this, participants were asked to make ratings of these variables for 8 palatable snack foods - and in a related test salivation rate was also assessed.

A four-day Western-style dietary intervention causes reductions in hippocampal-dependent learning and memory and interoceptive sensitivity.

In animals, a Western style diet-high in saturated fat and added sugar-causes impairments in hippocampal-dependent learning and memory (HDLM) and perception of internal bodily state (interoception). In humans, while there is correlational support for a link between Western-style diet, HDLM, and interoception, there is as yet no causal data. Here, healthy individuals were randomly assigned to consume either a breakfast high in saturated fat and added sugar (Experimental condition) or a healthier breakfast (Control condition), over four consecutive days.

A high-fat high-sugar diet predicts poorer hippocampal-related memory and a reduced ability to suppress wanting under satiety.

Animal data indicate that greater intake of fats and sugars prevalent in a Western diet impairs hippocampal memory and tests of behavioral inhibition known to be related to hippocampal function (e.g., feature negative discrimination tasks).

A systematic review of longer-term dietary interventions on human cognitive function: Emerging patterns and future directions.

Cognitive function may be affected by long-term diet and most of the support for this idea is derived from human correlational studies and animal prescribed diet studies. To date there has been no systematic examination of human experimental studies that examine whether a prescribed long-term (24 h+) diet can cause changes in cognitive function. Here, we review the experimental evidence of long-term changes in cognition following prescribed diet interventions.

Human olfactory consciousness and cognition: its unusual features may not result from unusual functions but from limited neocortical processing resources.

Human and animal olfactory perception is shaped both by functional demands and by various environmental constraints seemingly peculiar to chemical stimuli. These demands and constraints may have generated a sensory system that is cognitively distinct from the major senses. In this article we identify these various functional demands and constraints, and examine whether they can be used to account for olfaction's unique cognitive features on a case-by-case basis.