University of Leipzig Medical Center.
University of Fribourg.
Behav Ther. 2018 Mar;49(2):262-272. doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2017.07.005. Epub 2017 Jul 23.
Night eating syndrome (NES) is characterized by excessive evening and/or nocturnal eating episodes. Studies indicate an attentional bias towards food in other eating disorders. For NES, however, evidence of attentional food processing is lacking. Attention towards food and non-food stimuli was compared using eye-tracking in 19 participants with NES and 19 matched controls without eating disorders during a free exploration paradigm and a visual search task. In the free exploration paradigm, groups did not differ in initial fixation position or gaze duration. However, a significant orienting bias to food compared to non-food was found within the NES group, but not in controls. A significant attentional maintenance bias to non-food compared to food was found in both groups. Detection times did not differ between groups in the search task. Only in NES, attention to and faster detection of non-food stimuli were related to higher BMI and more evening eating episodes. The results might indicate an attentional approach-avoidance pattern towards food in NES. However, further studies should clarify the implications of attentional mechanisms for the etiology and maintenance of NES.
夜间进食综合征（NES）的特征是在晚上和/或夜间有过多的进食发作。研究表明，其他进食障碍存在对食物的注意力偏见。然而，对于 NES，缺乏注意力处理食物的证据。在自由探索范式和视觉搜索任务中，使用眼动追踪比较了 19 名 NES 患者和 19 名无进食障碍的匹配对照者对食物和非食物刺激的注意力。在自由探索范式中，两组在初始注视位置或注视时间上没有差异。然而，在 NES 组中发现了相对于非食物的显著食物定向偏向，而在对照组中则没有。在两组中都发现了相对于食物的非食物注意力维持偏向。在搜索任务中，两组的检测时间没有差异。只有在 NES 中，对非食物刺激的注意力和更快的检测与更高的 BMI 和更多的夜间进食发作有关。结果可能表明 NES 对食物存在注意力接近-回避模式。然而，进一步的研究应该阐明注意力机制对 NES 的病因和维持的影响。
