fNIRS-based Neurofeedback Intervention for Cognitive Control Improvement in Emotional Overeating

Status: Recruiting
Location: See location...
Intervention Type: Device, Other, Behavioral
Study Type: Interventional
Study Phase: Not Applicable
SUMMARY

Emotional overeating is characterized by an excessive food intake in the context of intense emotional situations, such as acute stress one. Emotional overeating, as a behavioral trait, can increase the risk of to develop eating disorders or eating-related diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, obesity, type-2 diabetes. Recently, imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electro-encephalography (EEG), have been adapted in order to perform neurofeedback consisting on presenting the brain activity instantaneously to the participant, that give him the possibility to modify this activity by his own mean. Neurofeedback has already shown some efficacy, either with explicit or implicit instruction. Compared with functional MRI (fMRI), functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS) is easy to handle, less expensive, and does not require a lying position. fNIRS is consequently more adapted for repeated acquisitions. Neurofeedback has already shown some promising results for neurological and psychiatric diseases. For mental states and emotion regulation, neurofeedback targeting the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has also shown promising outcomes. In this project, the investigators want to assess the effect of neurofeedback targeting the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) in a population of young adult women presenting emotional overeating. The investigators aim to improve the cognitive control and to reduce the episodes of emotional overeating in order to prevent the occurrence of subsequent pathologies. The intervention effect will be characterized with: (i) fMRI in order to evaluate the effect on cognitive control (with resting state fMRI or rsMRI) and on the reward system; (II) questionaries directly and one month after intervention in order to assess the behavioral effect. Besides an expected effect on emotional overeating, the investigators will evaluate whether an improvement of cognitive control can also promote positive effect on other behavioral traits that could lead to some pathologies such as food addiction. As a prerequisite to this study on emotional overeating (study B), the investigators will firstly validate on healthy subjects (study A) a reward anticipation fMRI task, which will be further used in study A in order to characterized the effect of neurofeedback on the reward system.

Eligibility
Participation Requirements
Sex: All
Minimum Age: 18
Maximum Age: 50
Healthy Volunteers: t
View:

• Normal Body Mass Index (18.5-25),

• Right-handlers

• Affiliated to a social security scheme

• Having given a free, informed and written consent

• Normal BMI (18.5-25),

• Right-handlers

• Affiliated to a social security scheme

• Having given a free, informed and written consent

• Based on emotional overeating questionary : having emotional overeating episodes \> 6 days in a month for at least one negative emotion

Locations
Other Locations
France
Chu Rennes - Pontchaillou
RECRUITING
Rennes
Contact Information
Primary
Loïc JACOB
loic.jacob@chu-rennes.fr
0299282555
Backup
Nicolas COQUERY, PhD
nicolas.coquery@inrae.fr
Time Frame
Start Date: 2022-04-07
Estimated Completion Date: 2025-05
Participants
Target number of participants: 80
Treatments
Other: Study A
Validation of the reward system-related fMRI task, as determined by an increased activation on the brain reward structure (striatum) under the task.
Experimental: Study B - Neurofeedback
The neurofeedback protocol will be the same during the 8 sessions constituting the protocol and taking place over a period of 4 weeks (2 neurofeedback sessions per week, the first and the last one in an MRI context). It will last 15 minutes per session, and during each session, the volunteer will have to increase the brain activity of his/her dlPFC using a visual gauge representing the activity level of his/her own dlPFC. No specific instructions will be given to the volunteer so that he/she can develop his/her own internal strategy to increase this activity level.
Sham_comparator: Study B - Control
In the control group with neurofeedback sham, the participants will receive the same instruction but will be shown a random signal, the goal being that the control strategy the participant tries to implement is not correlated with the visual feedback provided by the gauge.
Related Therapeutic Areas
Sponsors
Leads: Rennes University Hospital
Collaborators: Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement

This content was sourced from clinicaltrials.gov