Effects of Neural Correlates of Food-Specific Intentional Inhibition in Predicting Body Fat Loss for Overweight and Normal-Weight Young Adults: The Mediation of Restrained Eating.

Background/

Objectives

Intentional inhibition reflects voluntary control abilities and is assumed to be an indicator of overweight. The medial frontal cortex is an important brain region associated with intentional inhibition. Nevertheless, it is uncertain whether being overweight is connected to impaired food-related intentional inhibition (FII), and if so, what its underlying neural correlates are. The present study therefore aims to provide increased support for overweight due to impairment of FII.

Methods

Firstly, 55 overweight and 45 normal-weight college students (Sample 1) were instructed to perform a go/no-go/choose task, which included a resting-state fMRI. Neural correlates of FII were examined using regional homogeneity (ReHo) analyses. Subsequently, an additional 180 undergraduates (87 overweight and 93 normal-weight; Sample 2) were examined to ascertain the differences in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between overweight and normal-weight participants. The study also investigated whether restrained eating mediated the effect of rsFCs on one-year body index changes.

Results

FII demonstrated a positive correlation with the cerebellum, inferior temporal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and cingulate gyrus. Additionally, in comparison with participants with normal weight, overweight participants demonstrated diminished rsFC between the FII-related areas and the postcentral gyrus, while heightened rsFC strengths were found between these areas and the middle temporal gyrus and precuneus. Furthermore, mediation analyses demonstrated that cingulate-precuneus connectivity is linked to fat mass index change a year later through restrained eating.

Conclusions

FII was associated with connectivity between brain regions involved in inhibitory control and maladaptive eating. Furthermore, we investigated how these connectivity patterns could potentially affect future body fat loss through restrained eating.