Food Characteristics Implicated in Biobehavioral Indicators of Addiction in Vulnerable Individuals
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation investigated if foods may vary in their ability to activate reward-related mechanisms implicated in addictive disorders and whether differences in these processes may be amplified for individuals who exhibit a phenotype consistent with an addiction to food. Specifically, this work examined 1) associations between various foods and food characteristics with to neural and behavioral reward responses, 2) differential relationships between food characteristics with reward responses for individuals with or without a food addiction phenotype, and 3) differential associations of subjective effect reports of nutritionally diverse food items with eating behavior for persons with or without a food addiction phenotype. Women with overweight and obesity (N=43), half of whom met criteria for food addiction (n=21), participated in an fMRI food cue reactivity task of 34 nutritionally diverse foods, reported on wanting and liking for each food after the scan, engaged in a taste test task that assessed facets of subjective experience for 14 of the foods, and had the opportunity to consume these 14 foods during a 15-minute ad libitum consumption period. Individuals with food addiction exhibited greater activation in the precuneus, a region implicated in compulsive use of addictive substances, in response to highly processed food cues, suggesting that the food addiction phenotype may represent a more severe, compulsive phenotype within obesity. Further, highly processed foods were associated with subjective effect reports indicative of elevated abuse liability, which were uniquely related to consumption for persons with food addiction. Across all three study aims, ambivalence emerged as a likely contributor to both biological and behavioral reward responses to food. This research has important implications for informing future work exploring mechanisms involved in food addiction, intervention efforts for addictive-like eating and obesity, and food-related public policy initiatives.
Author: Erica Schulte
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3028048761