Neural Mechanisms Underlying Improving Health Behavior with Cognitive Training under Stress

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Abstract Submission 

Qianqian Ju^1,2, Yujia Peng^1,2,3,4, Yiqun Gan^1,2

¹Peking University, Beijing, China, ²School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Beijing, China, ³Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China, 4, Beijing, China, ⁴National Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, BIGAI, Beijing, China

Qianqian Ju  
Peking University|School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health
Beijing, China|Beijing, China

Yujia Peng  
Peking University|School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health|Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China, 4|National Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, BIGAI
Beijing, China|Beijing, China|Beijing, China|Beijing, China

Yiqun Gan  
Peking University|School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health
Beijing, China|Beijing, China

Individuals under stress are likely to overeat high-calorie food. ROC (Regulation of Craving) intervention can reduce the intake of unhealthy high-calorie food. However, the neural mechanism of inhibitory control of food stimuli underlying ROC intervention in exposure to stress remains unclear.
The current study aims to investigate the effect of ROC on diet behavior and whether the impact of stress on food could be alleviated to form healthier diet behavior. We further examine neural mechanisms of how ROC can effectively improve food choices and promote dietary health by influencing inhibition control through EEG.

A total of 24 human subjects (13 females) participated in the EEG experiment of high/low-calorie food-related inhibitory control. The study adopted a 2 * (intervention group: ROC vs. control, between-subject) * 2 (stress group: stress vs. no-stress, between-subject) * 2 (task type: high-calorie vs. low-calorie task, within-group) mixed experimental design. We used the Revised Trier Social Stress Task (TSST) to manipulate acute stress. Inhibitory control was measured through the classic Go/No-go task in an EEG setting (Figure 1). Event-related potentials (ERPs) between stress and no stress among intervention and control groups were analyzed.

Five data were removed due to failing to finish the experiment. Behavior results showed that ROC intervention significantly increased inhibitory control performances (i.e., larger ACC, smaller RT) under stress conditions in low-calorie tasks. ERP results on N2 revealed a significant three-way interaction between intervention, stress, and task (Figure 2). Specifically, under the stress-invoked condition, a significant two-way interaction showed that ROC yielded a greater reduction of no-go N2 amplitude in frontal/frontal-central in high-calorie tasks compared to low-calorie tasks. Meanwhile, under the no-stress condition, the ROC intervention group yielded an overall reduction of N2 amplitude for both high- and low-calorie tasks compared to the control group.

The current study demonstrated the negative impact of stress on food-related inhibition control, that a greater effort of inhibition was needed when facing high-calorie food in exposure to stress. We also confirmed a positive effect of ROC intervention for improving inhibition control under both stress and no-stress conditions, especially for high-calorie food, which may contribute to forming healthier diet behavior under stressful situations.

Emotional Perception ¹

Emotion and Motivation Other

Executive Function, Cognitive Control and Decision Making ²

Attention: Visual

Perception and Attention Other

ADULTS

Behavioral Therapy

Cognition

Computational Neuroscience

Electroencephaolography (EEG)

Emotions