NCT02402088

The Role of Emotional Arousal in Food Preference and Taste

The Purpose of This Study is to Investigate the Role of Stress in Food Craving and Food Consumption by Examining Stress Response Using Subjective, Physiological and Neurobiological Measurements

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 160 (actual)
• Sponsor: Yale University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 45 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of stress in food craving and food consumption in obesity. Using experimentally validated guided imagery procedure, the investigators propose to examine the stress response using subjective, physiological and neurobiological measurements.

Detailed description

One hundred and fifty men and women will participate in three laboratory sessions to assess stress responses to personal stress imagery, food cue imagery, and to neutral-relaxing imagery. Subjects will be distributed into 3 groups stratified by BMI category. Subject recruitment, eligibility determination, baseline assessments and script development will be conducted at the Yale Stress Center. Subjects will complete a variety of diagnostic, cognitive and psychological assessments, a comprehensive physical examination and blood work and will be involved in development of imagery scripts from personal stress, food cue and neutral-relaxing situations. Subjects will then be scheduled for three laboratory sessions at the Yale Stress Center. Subjects will also participate in an imagery and relaxation training session followed by three laboratory sessions. The three laboratory sessions will be conducted within a brief interval of days, when subjects will be exposed to a personal stress, a food cue and a neutral-relaxing imagery condition, one condition per day. The order of imagery conditions will be randomly assigned and counterbalanced across subjects in order to balance any influences due to order of imagery conditions.

Conditions

• Obesity
• Food Craving
• Food Consumption

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Stress Imagery	The stress imagery script will be based on subjects' description of a recent personal stressful event that they had experienced as "most stressful". "Most stressful" is determined by having the subjects rate the perceived stress experienced by them on a 10-point Likert scale where "1=not at all stressful" and "10=the most stress they felt recently in their life". Only situations rated as 8 or above on this scale are accepted as appropriate for script development. Examples of acceptable stressful situations include breakup with significant other, a verbal argument with a significant other or family member or unemployment-related stress, such as being fired or laid off from work.
BEHAVIORAL	Food Cue Imagery	A food cue script will be developed from the subjects' experience of eating their most favorite foods. Examples include ordering pizza, cooking a favorite meal, or going out to a restaurant.
BEHAVIORAL	Neutral-Relaxing	A neutral-relaxing script will be developed from the subjects' commonly experienced neutral-relaxing situations, such as a trip to the beach or park.

Timeline

• Start date: 2013-08-01
• Primary completion: 2019-06-01
• Completion: 2019-08-01
• First posted: 2015-03-30
• Last updated: 2022-02-11

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States