Goal-directed and Cue-dependent Behavior in Severe Obesity

Completed

• Conditions: Obesity; Eating Behavior; Habits
• Interventions: Behavioral: mindset induction

• Registration Number: NCT04187066
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital Tuebingen

Brief Summary

The current proposal aims to investigate implicit and explicit priming paradigms for changing cue-dependent and goal-directed nutritional behavior in participants with severe obesity before and after bariatric surgery as well as in a control group with normal weight.

Detailed Description

Food choice and intake is a daily and throughout normal subject. However, for more and more people eating habits and the question of food choice are of increasing interest and in several cases even a problem. The prevalence of obesity has tripled in the last decades and it is even spoken of an obesity epidemic. Life style interventions to lose weight often fail on the long run, also because people fall back into former unhealthy eating habits. Bariatric surgery is a very effective procedure to reduce weight fundamentally.

Various factors influence our daily food choice, not all of which are apparent to ourselves. Thus, food choice might be goal-directed and therefore conscious and reflective, yet in other circumstances the choice to eat something specific might be based on cue dependent processes which are automatic and thus difficult to control. The aim of the current study is to investigate cue-dependent and goal-directed nutritional behavior as well as the effect of a health mindset induction in severe obesity as well as changes in such behaviors due to bariatric surgery.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2019-08-01
• Study First Submitted: 2019-11-26
• Study First Submitted QC: 2019-12-02
• Study First Posted: 2019-12-05
• Primary Completion: 2024-10-31
• Status Verified: 2024-12
• Study Completion: 2024-12-01
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-12-04
• Last Update Posted: 2024-12-09

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 50

Inclusion Criteria

• experimental: severe obesity
• control: normal weight

Exclusion Criteria

• impaired cognitive functions, which might conflict with the task
• appropriate German

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Obese	mindset induction	severe obesity
Control	mindset induction	Control group with normal weight

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
changes in food choice behavior due to substantial weight loss by bariatric surgery	pre bariatric surgery, 1 month after bariatric surgery, 6 months after bariatric surgery	changes in cue-dependent and goal-directed food choices assessed by the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University Clinic of Tuebingen, fMEG Center; 🇩🇪 Tuebingen, Germany