This project aims at understanding the psychological mechanisms that are at stake in obesity.
Overeating and obesity are major public health issues. Besides the health problems they often entail (e.g., cardiovascular problems and diabetes), they are also associated with affective and cognitive impairments.
However, these alterations are still poorly understood and further research on this topic is thus crucial.
The aim of this project is to train certain cognitive abilities (executive functions) in a population of various Body Mass Indexes (BMI). These abilities will be trained by the means of different tasks, which will be adapted to be performed online with food-related stimuli. Before and after training, neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral testing will be used to assess the impact of training on the reactivity of the reward circuitry to food cues as well as emotion regulation, food intake and weight. In a nutshell, this project aims at a better understanding of the bidirectional links between food intake and affective and cognitive functioning.
