Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China; Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China.
Appetite. 2023 Dec 1;191:107048. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2023.107048. Epub 2023 Oct 5.
Memory about food and eating is crucial in regulating appetite and eating behaviors. Successfully stopping vivid imagination of delicious food could help reduce food craving and thus reduce the possibility of further intake. Memory inhibition is a cognitive process that involves intentional suppression of certain memories coming to consciousness. Successful memory suppression derives from inhibitory control. Although considerable work has consistently observed the impairment in motor or response inhibitory control among individuals with obesity, there has been a lack of investigation into the influence of bodyweight status on memory inhibitory control. To fill this gap, current study investigated behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of memory suppression in young women. Using Think/No-Think task and event-related potentials among 47 females, we found that participants with higher visceral adipose tissue (VAT) showed a tendency towards decreased suppression ability for memories related to food but not memories related to nonfood items. In depth analysis showed that decrease in the differences in P2 amplitudes between suppression vs. retrieval of food-related memories mediated the impairment of suppression ability by high VAT. We then tested whether individual differences in memory suppression ability as well as ERP correlates predicted future BMI or VAT change over 1-year follow-up. Results showed that P2 amplitudes when retrieving food-related memory could predict VAT change at 1-year follow-up among participants with healthy BMI. These observations suggest a hypersensitivity inference hypothesis underlying memory control impairments. To be specific, deficits in memory suppression may be in part resulted from elevated sensitivity to the cues coupling with food-related memory. It extends previous studies of memory suppression with food rewards and provides the first evidence to help understand the relationship between inhibitory control on food-related memory and obesity.
对食物和进食的记忆对于调节食欲和进食行为至关重要。成功阻止对美味食物的生动想象可以帮助减少食物渴望，从而降低进一步摄入的可能性。记忆抑制是一种认知过程，涉及到对进入意识的特定记忆的有意抑制。成功的记忆抑制源于抑制控制。尽管大量研究一致观察到肥胖个体在运动或反应抑制控制方面的损害，但对于体重状况对记忆抑制控制的影响的研究还很缺乏。为了填补这一空白，当前的研究调查了年轻女性的记忆抑制的行为和神经生理相关性。通过对 47 名女性进行思维/非思维任务和事件相关电位的研究，我们发现，内脏脂肪组织（VAT）较高的参与者在与食物相关的记忆抑制能力方面表现出降低的趋势，但与非食物相关的记忆抑制能力没有降低。深入分析表明，在与食物相关的记忆的抑制与检索之间的 P2 振幅差异减小介导了高 VAT 对抑制能力的损害。然后，我们测试了记忆抑制能力以及 ERP 相关性的个体差异是否可以预测未来 1 年的 BMI 或 VAT 变化。结果表明，在 BMI 健康的参与者中，当检索与食物相关的记忆时，P2 振幅可以预测 1 年后的 VAT 变化。这些观察结果表明，记忆控制障碍的基础是记忆抑制的敏感性假设。具体来说，记忆抑制的缺陷可能部分是由于对与食物相关的记忆相关的线索的敏感性升高所致。它扩展了以前关于食物奖励的记忆抑制的研究，并提供了第一个证据来帮助理解食物相关记忆的抑制控制与肥胖之间的关系。
