Reducing Craving for Cancer-promoting Foods Via Cognitive Self-regulation

描述(由申请人提供)：当一个人不饿的时候吃高能量的食物是超重和肥胖的一个因素，这是一系列癌症的危险因素。过量食用这些食物中的一部分，如红肉或高血糖指数的食物，是除超重和肥胖之外的另一个癌症风险因素。我们将通过其中一种或两种途径与癌症相关的食物称为致癌食物。该项目的目标是通过改善对致癌食物的渴望的认知自我调节来降低癌症风险。我们将重点放在对致癌食品的渴求上，将其作为消费的一个直接决定因素。渴望包括想要吃一种食物的主观感觉，寻找食物的动机，以及与食物有关的反复或侵入性的想法。大量研究表明，即使在没有饥饿的情况下，饥饿感也是进食的有力预测因素。因此，加强一种简单、低成本和易于传播的工具来减少人们对致癌食品的渴望将促进癌症预防和相关研究。来自情感科学和社会神经科学的研究发现，认知自我调节策略 能有效地减少饥饿感及其相关的神经系统。这项工作主要集中在对其他食欲刺激(如药物线索)的渴望上，而对食物渴望的调节才刚刚开始研究。我们实验室最近的结果证实了四种策略，它们有效地减少了对高能量食物的渴望。这项工作依赖于渴望的自我报告，这些报告提供了一个经验起点，但并不能证明策略本身的有效性。因此，拟议项目的目标是使用自我报告以外的其他措施，为食物渴望的认知自我调节的有效性提供额外的支持，并验证一种理论上有基础的手段，以进一步提高这些策略的有效性--策略选择。这些目标将在两届会议的单一研究范围内实现。首先，参与者将被随机分配以选择他们的监管策略或为他们选择一个。在第一节课中， 当他们交替观看高能量食物的图像并调节他们对这些食物的反应时，他们的自我报告的渴望和神经反应将被记录下来。这些数据将被用来检验食物调节对神经激活和渴望自我报告的影响，并比较策略选择对这些措施的影响。在第二节课中，参与者将在第一节课后三天参观我们的行为实验室，在这一节中，他们将以自然和不引人注目的方式测量他们对高能量食物的实际摄入量。两组高能量食物摄入量的差异将为饮食策略选择的有效性提供一个行为衡量标准。此外，第一阶段食物线索反应和调节过程中的大脑活动将被用来预测第二阶段的摄入量。心理学理论和以前的神经科学数据表明，神经活动，特别是内侧前额叶皮质的神经活动，可能解释自我报告之外能量密集型食物摄入量的差异，并可能中介策略选择对摄入量的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Eating energy-dense foods when one is not hungry is a contributor to overweight and obesity, which are risk factors for a range of cancers. Excessive eating of a subset of these foods, such as red meat or foods with a high glycemic index, is an additional risk factor for cancer, separate from overweight and obesity. We refer to foods that are linked to cancer through either or both routes as cancer-promoting foods. The goal of this project is to reduce cancer risk by improving cognitive self-regulation of cravings for cancer-promoting foods. We focus on craving of cancer-promoting foods as one proximal determinant of their consumption. Craving consists of a subjective sense of wanting to eat a food, a motivation to seek out the food, and recurrent or intrusive thoughts related to the food. Considerable research shows that craving is a strong predictor of eating, even in the absence of hunger. Thus, enhancing a simple, low-cost and easily disseminated tool to reduce craving for cancer-promoting foods would advance cancer prevention and related research. Studies from affective science and social neuroscience have identified cognitive self-regulation strategies that are effective in reducing craving and their associated neural systems. This work has focused mostly on craving for other appetitive stimuli (e.g., drug cues), and has only begun to study regulation of food craving. Recent results from our laboratory validated four strategies that are effective in reducing cravings for energy-dense foods. This work relies upon self-reports of craving, which provide an empirical starting point but do not demonstrate the validity of the strategies on their own. Thus, the goals of the proposed project are to provide additional support for the effectiveness of cognitive self-regulation of food cravings using other measures beyond self-report, and to validate a theoretically grounded means to further increase the efficacy of those strategies-strategy choice. These goals will be accomplished in the context of a single study with two sessions. First, participants will be randomly assigned to choose their regulation strategy or to have one selected for them. In Session 1, their self-reported cravings and neural responses will be recorded while they alternately view images of energy- dense foods and regulate their responses to those foods. These data will be used to examine the effects of food regulation on neural activation and self-reports of craving, and to compare the effect of strategy choice on those measures. In Session 2, participants will visit our behavioral laboratory three days following Session 1 for a session in which their actual intake of energy-dense food will be measured in a naturalistic and unobtrusive manner. The difference in energy-dense food intake between the two groups will provide a behavioral measure of the efficacy of strategy choice on eating. Also, brain activity during food cue reactivity and regulation from Session 1 will be used to predict intake during Session 2. Psychological theory and previous neuroscience data suggest that neural activity, particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex, might explain variance in energy-dense food intake above and beyond self-report, and might mediate the effect of strategy choice on intake.