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Exploring the Relationship Between Obesity and Inhibitory Control

Undergraduate #309
Discipline: Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Subcategory: Social Sciences/Psychology/Economics

Brandon Almestica - Virginia State University


Obesity is an epidemic that rapidly rose within the last few decades. Since 1980 obesity has doubled among adults and tripled in teenagers, contributing to a large number of health problems for overweight individuals. Obesity has been linked with reduced inhibitory control which may lead to overeating. We attempted to explore this association in students at an HBCU. Volunteers were assessed on multiple measures of obesity (BMI, hip to waist ratio, and waist circumference) and inhibitory control was measured using a go-nogo task. We predicted that that overweight or subjects with higher BMIs will have a lower inhibitory control than average weighted individuals. Our preliminary results suggest that our hypothesis was not supported; however, our current pool of subjects is low on obese participants. This project is ongoing and a broader range of participants is being recruited.

L. van den Berg et al., Association between impulsivity, reward responsiveness and body mass index in children, Int. J. Obes. 35, 1301-1307 (2011).
K. Kamijo et al., The association of childhood obesity to neuroelectric indices of inhibition, Psychophysiology 49, 1361-1371 (2012).
C. Nederkoorn, et al., Specificity of the failure to inhibit responses in overweight children, Appetite 59, 409-413 (2012).
K. Houben, Overcoming the urge to splurge: Influencing eating behavior by manipulating inhibitory control, J. Behav. Ther. Exp. Psychiatry 42, 384-388 (2011).

Funder Acknowledgement(s): No funder information.

Faculty Advisor: Milton O. Faison, N/A

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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