Healthy Behaviors Learning Task and Sleep
Condition: Overweight/Obese Population
MeSH terms: Overweight
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      This research is being done to study the impacts of a computerized learning task on health
      behaviors. The investigators are interested in studying whether this computerized learning
      task can help with weight loss.
    

Detailed description: 
      Over 1/3 of U.S. adults over the age of 20 are obese and obesity is associated with a host of
      deleterious medical comorbidities, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer,
      costing the U.S. approximately $147 billion annually. Novel approaches to address this public
      health crisis are needed. Although obesity is multiply determined, it is ultimately a
      disorder of positive energy balance, such that weight loss requires increases in physical
      activity and improvements in choosing healthy over unhealthy foods. People who are strongly
      motivated to eat are more obese, and derive less benefit from weight loss treatments. There
      are two general approaches to addressing this pattern: 1) increase the reinforcing value of
      healthy foods and/or 2) increase an individual's self-control, i.e., the ability to inhibit
      approach responses to less healthy foods.

      Emerging research has begun to develop and test training programs that directly modify
      tendencies to approach one type of stimulus while resisting temptation of another type of
      stimulus for problems other than obesity. For example, researchers have been able to train
      heavy drinkers to decrease their weekly alcohol intake7 and chocolate-lovers to reduce their
      chocolate intake. However, these researchers did not also incorporate increasing interest in
      alternatives (e.g., drinking water instead of beer). This training mechanism has also yet to
      be applied to research on obesity and decreasing intake of unhealthy foods.

      Participants will be first trained via a computerized training task to inhibit responses to
      high-calorie (unhealthy) foods, and to approach alternative low-calorie, high-nutrient
      (healthy) foods, in order to test the tasks efficacy. The investigators will include the
      training task and incorporate a nap component consistent with Hu and colleagues to evaluate
      the utility of sleep conditioning for maintaining training-related changes in inhibition and
      approach tendencies after one week. Tones played during the training task will be played
      again during the nap, based on randomization
    

Intervention name(s): Modified Go/No-Go Task
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Participants in the experimental group and control sham sound cues group will complete a computerized training task to facilitate learning to respond (press a computer key) to healthy food stimuli and to inhibit responses (not press a computer key) to unhealthy food stimuli. Participants in the control sham go/no-go group will complete a similar task with common office supplies (approach) and tools (inhibit). All participants will also complete a 24 hour dietary recall as described below.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: Triple (Participant, Care Provider, Investigator)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: healthy; BMI; weight loss; sleep; healthy sleeper; overweight; obese