Clinical trial NCT04117542: Working Memory in Overweight Children With and Without Loss of Control Eating
Official title: Neural Substrates of Context-dependent Working Memory in Youth With Overweight/Obesity and Loss of Control Eating
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Binge Eating
Pediatric Obesity
Keywords: Loss of Control Eating
Working Memory
Lead sponsor: The Miriam Hospital
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Brown University
First posted: 2019-10-07
Enrollment: 30
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 10
Maximum age (years): 17
Standard ages: CHILD
Observational model: CASE_CONTROL
Time perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Participants will be 30 children, ages 10-17, 15 of whom who are overweight/obese and report loss of control eating (i.e., at least 3 objectively or subjectively large loss of control episodes in the past 3 months), and 15 of whom who will serve as overweight/obese controls.

Brief summary: Loss of control (LOC) eating in children is associated with multiple physical and mental health impairments, including obesity and eating disorders. Little is known about the developmental neurobiology of LOC, which is crucial to specifying its pathophysiology and the development of effective preventive interventions. Individual differences in working memory (WM) appear to be related to LOC eating and excess weight status in youth, but the specificity and neural correlates of these individual differences are unclear. Failure to adequately understand the nature of associations between WM and eating behavior in children with overweight/obesity limits the development of appropriately-targeted, neuro-developmentally informed interventions addressing problematic eating and related weight gain in youth. To close this clinical research gap, the current study proposes to investigate the context-dependence of WM impairment and its neural correlates in children with concomitant overweight/ obesity and LOC eating as compared to their overweight/obese peers.

Specific aims are to investigate:

1)WM performance in youth with LOC eating relative to overweight/obese controls during recalls in the context of food-related versus neutral distractors; and 2) neural activation patterns during WM performance across both food-related and neutral stimuli. We hypothesize that, relative to their overweight/obese peers, youth with LOC eating will show 1) more errors and slower response times during recalls involving food-related vs. neutral distractors, and fewer errors and faster response times during recalls involving food-related vs. neutral targets; 2) increased activation in prefrontal regions during WM performance across stimuli types relative to overweight/obese controls, and 3) even greater activation in the context of food-related versus neutral distractors.

The proposed study is the first to use state-of-the-science neuroimaging methodology to clarify the relations between WM and LOC eating, with strong potential to advance understanding of the associations among executive functioning, excess weight status, and eating pathology, and inform the development of interventions (e.g., WM training) to alleviate their cumulative personal and societal burden.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Overweight/Obese (\>85% expected body mass)
* Right-handed

Exclusion Criteria:

* Currently taking any medications known to affect their weight/appetite
* Report current or past medical or psychiatric conditions known to significantly affect eating or weight (e.g., diabetes, bulimia nervosa), with the exception of binge eating disorder
* Have an intelligence quotient (IQ) in the borderline range or lower, or any condition affecting executive functioning (e.g., recent concussion, history of traumatic brain injury)
* Are unable to read or comprehend study materials
* Are receiving concurrent treatment for overweight/obesity
* Have metallic foreign bodies, face or neck tattoos, or other conditions that would prohibit fMRI scanning

Primary outcomes:
measure: BMI
timeFrame: 1 day
measure: Eating Behavior
timeFrame: 1 day
measure: Neural Activity
timeFrame: Up to 2 weeks
measure: Working Memory
timeFrame: 1 day
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Providence
country: United States
facility: Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center
state: Rhode Island
Study officials:
affiliation: Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
name: Andrea B. Goldschmidt, Ph.D.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: