Objective: Poor weight management may relate to a reduction in neurobehavioural control over food intake and
heightened reactivity of the brain's neural reward pathways. Here we explore the neurophysiology of foodrelated
visual cue processing in weight reduced and weight relapsed women by assessing differences in cortical
arousal and attentional processing using a food-Stroop paradigm.
Methods: 51 women were recruited into 4 groups: reduced-weight participants (RED, n=14) compared to BMI
matched low-weight controls (LW-CTL, n = 18); and weight relapsed participants (REL, n = 10) compared to
BMI matched high-weight controls (HW-CTL, n = 9). Eating behaviour and body image questionnaires were
completed. Two Stroop tasks (one containing food images, the other containing neutral images)were completed
with record of electroencephalography (EEG).
Results: Differences in cortical arousalwere found in RED versus LW-CTL women, and were seen during food task
execution only. Compared to their controls, RED women exhibited lower relative delta band power (p =0.01)
and higher relative beta band power (p = 0.01) over the right frontal cortex (F4). Within the RED group, delta
band oscillations correlated positively with self-reported habitual fat intake and with body shape dissatisfaction.
Conclusions: As compared to women matched for phenotype but with no history of weight reduction, reducedoverweight/
obese women show increased neurobehavioural control over external food cues and the inhibition
of reward-orientated feeding responses. Insight into these self-regulatory mechanisms which attenuate food
cue saliency may aid in the development of cognitive remediation therapies which facilitate long-term weight
loss.