NCT04813003

How Altered Gut-Brain-Axis Influences Food Choices: Part 1

How Altered Gut-Brain-Axis Influences Food Choices. (BrainFood) Part 1: Brain Imaging and Computational Modelling

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 50 (actual)
• Sponsor: Lia Bally · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Obesity is currently one of the most substantial health burdens. Due to the production of marked and sustained weight loss, bariatric surgery is an increasingly used therapeutic modality to combat obesity and its comorbidities. Surgical rearrangement of the gastrointestinal tract remarkably alters metabolism and hormones acting on neurological and hypothalamic signalling involved in food decision-making and eating behaviour. In this context, many patients who underwent bariatric surgery self-report changes in appetite, satiety and food preferences. Furthermore, new gut hormone-based (e.g. GLP1-receptor agonist or GLP-1-RA) pharmacotherapies which mimic the effect of bariatric surgery show impressive efficacy on weight reduction by modulation of food behaviour. However, the mechanisms of such functional changes, and how they relate to food decision-making remain unknown. In this project, the investigators propose a novel approach to unravel the effect of obesity treatments (surgical and non-surgical) on the neural coding of nutritional attributes and its impact on dietary choices using a combination of brain imaging, computational modelling of food behaviour and assessment of eating and food purchase behaviour in daily life.

Detailed description

The overall aim of this project is to elucidate the neurobehavioural underpinnings of food behaviour among obese adults and how food behavior is altered by different obesity treatments.To this end, the study consists of an experimental setting combining neurobehavioural tasks, computational modelling and functional brain imaging. The main objective of Part 1 of the BrainFood-project is to elucidate if neural coding and food behaviour differ between obese adults and lean adults. The investigators hypothesize that subjective neural processes of nutritional food attributes differ between the obese and control participants, showing an unhealthier pattern among obese participants. To this aim, the outcomes will be compared between groups (surgery group and control group).

Conditions

• Obesity
• Food Preferences

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Functional Brain Imaging and neurobehavioural tasks	Combination of 3 neurobehavioural tasks: Task 1 consists in subjective value rating of 64 food items. Participants are asked to rate how much they would want to eat the presented food item while fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging ) scanning is performed. Task 2 consists in rating of subjective nutrient factor of the same 64 food items. Participants will answer the following four categorical questions in randomized order for each item: low or high in added sugar/protein/fat and healthy or unhealthy. Task 3 consists of a decision-making task. Participants will be presented with two food items (out of the 64 food items), and asked to choose which of the two items they prefer to consume at the end of the experiment.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-04-12
• Primary completion: 2022-09-05
• Completion: 2022-09-05
• First posted: 2021-03-24
• Last updated: 2022-09-23

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland