The effect of an active-controlled 8-week Mindful Eating intervention on food-related attentional control
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2019-07-04
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en
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Background: Existing literature suggests that attentional control is needed to overcome an attentional bias towards food cues. Overcoming this bias is important in avoiding unhealthy eating behaviors, such as overeating. Increasing attentional control will thus help to increase healthy eating behavior. Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) focus on learning to be aware when attention drifts and to redirect attention. While it is shown that these interventions are able to increase healthy eating behaviors, the underlying mechanism is unknown. Improved attentional control towards food cues may play a role.
Aim: To investigate whether food-related attentional control is improved by a protocolled Mindful Eating intervention, thereby exploring whether this might underlie the known beneficial effects of MBIs on healthy eating behaviors. Furthermore, changes on a neural level are studied to investigate whether attentional control-related brain regions show changes in activation.
Method: A group of 44 healthy subjects, who were motivated to change their eating habits, participated in either an 8-week Mindful Eating intervention or an 8-week Educational Cooking intervention (active control). Attentional control was measured before and after the interventions with a food Stroop task, which was performed in an MRI scanner. For this task, changes in reaction times and BOLD responses from pre- to post-intervention were analyzed, while looking at differences between the intervention groups.
Results: No significant differences in reaction times and BOLD responses were found between the intervention groups from pre- to post-intervention. There was a significant main effect of food interference words (versus positive emotional words) on reaction times over both intervention groups and time points. Over both groups and time points, the left inferior and superior frontal gyrus and the left middle temporal gyrus showed specific activation for food interference versus neutral words, while the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left inferior and superior parietal lobule, and the left angular gyrus showed greater activation for food interference words than positive emotional interference words.
Conclusion: These results suggest that there was no difference in changes in attentional control between the Mindful Eating intervention and the active control intervention. This would imply that the positive effects of MBIs on healthy eating behavior might not be driven by changes in attentional control. Alternative mechanisms of change are discussed.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen