Overweight and Obese Women’s Perceptions About Making Healthy Change During Pregnancy: A Mixed Method Study.
Overweight and Obese Women’s Perceptions About Making Healthy Change During Pregnancy: A Mixed Method Study.
Filed under: Eating Disorders
Matern Child Health J. 2012 Dec 22;
Sui Z, Turnbull DA, Dodd JM
Overweight and obesity during pregnancy is associated with risk of a range of adverse health outcomes. While intervention studies aim to promote behavioral change, little is known about the underlying psychological mechanisms facilitating and hindering change. The aim of this study was to evaluate overweight and obese women’s perceptions of making behavior change during pregnancy. We explored beliefs through self-administrated questionnaires (n = 464) and semi-structured face-to-face interviews (n = 26). Questions were designed according to the Health Belief Model. A triangulation protocol was followed to combine quantitative and qualitative data. A total of 269 women (58 %) indicated that high gestational weight gain is a concern, with 348 (75 %) indicating excessive weight gain is associated with complications during pregnancy or child birth. Women were aware of maternal complications associated with high gestational weight gain, but had more limited awareness of neonatal complications. While most women indicated in questionnaires that healthy eating and physical activity were associated with improved health during pregnancy, they were unable to identify specific benefits at interview. Barriers to making healthy behavior changes were highly individualized, the main barrier being lack of time. While the majority (91 %) of women indicated that they would make behavior changes if the change made them feel better, only half felt confident in their ability to do so. Interventions for overweight and obese pregnant women should incorporate education about neonatal health consequences and benefits of healthy behavior change in addition to incorporating strategies to enhance self-efficacy.
HubMed – eating
On folivory, competition, and intelligence: generalisms, overgeneralizations, and models of primate evolution.
Filed under: Eating Disorders
Primates. 2012 Dec 20;
Sayers K
Considerations of primate behavioral evolution often proceed by assuming the ecological and competitive milieus of particular taxa via their relative exploitation of gross food types, such as fruits versus leaves. Although this “fruit/leaf dichotomy” has been repeatedly criticized, it continues to be implicitly invoked in discussions of primate socioecology and female social relationships and is explicitly invoked in models of brain evolution. An expanding literature suggests that such views have severely limited our knowledge of the social and ecological complexities of primate folivory. This paper examines the behavior of primate folivore-frugivores, with particular emphasis on gray langurs (traditionally, Semnopithecus entellus) within the broader context of evolutionary ecology. Although possessing morphological characteristics that have been associated with folivory and constrained activity patterns, gray langurs are known for remarkable plasticity in ecology and behavior. Their diets are generally quite broad and can be discussed in relation to Liem’s Paradox, the odd coupling of anatomical feeding specializations with a generalist foraging strategy. Gray langurs, not coincidentally, inhabit arguably the widest range of habitats for a nonhuman primate, including high elevations in the Himalayas. They provide an excellent focal point for examining the assumptions and predictions of behavioral, socioecological, and cognitive evolutionary models. Contrary to the classical descriptions of the primate folivore, Himalayan and other gray langurs-and, in actuality, many leaf-eating primates-range widely, engage in resource competition (both of which have previously been noted for primate folivores), and solve ecological problems rivaling those of more frugivorous primates (which has rarely been argued for primate folivores). It is maintained that questions of primate folivore adaptation, temperate primate adaptation, and primate evolution more generally cannot be answered by the frequent approach of broad characterizations, categorization models, crude variables, weakly correlative evidence, and subjective definitions. As a corollary, many current avenues of study are inadequate for explaining primate adaptation. A true understanding of primate ecology can only be achieved through the use of mainstream evolutionary ecology and thorough linkage of both proximate and ultimate mechanisms.
HubMed – eating
Sex-Based fMRI Differences in Obese Humans in Response to High vs. Low Energy Food Cues.
Filed under: Eating Disorders
Behav Brain Res. 2012 Dec 19;
Geliebter A, Pantazatos SP, McOuatt H, Puma L, Gibson CD, Atalayer D
Gender specific effects on human eating have been previously reported. Here we investigated sex-based differences in neural activation via whole-brain blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in response to high energy-dense (high-ED) vs. low-ED visual and auditory food cues in obese men vs. women in both fed and fasted states. The results show that in response to high vs. low ED foods in the fed state, obese men (vs. women), had greater activation in brain areas associated with motor control regions (e.g. supplementary motor areas) whereas women showed greater activation in cognitive-related regions. When fasted, obese men had greater activation in a visual-attention region whereas obese women showed greater activation in affective and reward related processing regions (e.g. caudate). Overall the results support our a priori hypothesis that obese women (vs. men) have greater neural activation in regions associated with cognition and emotion-related brain regions. These findings may improve our understanding of sex specific differences among obese individuals in eating behavior.
HubMed – eating
Mapping brain circuits of reward and motivation: In the footsteps of Ann Kelley.
Filed under: Eating Disorders
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012 Dec 19;
Richard JM, Castro DC, Difeliceantonio AG, Robinson MJ, Berridge KC
Ann Kelley was a scientific pioneer in reward neuroscience. Her many notable discoveries included demonstrations of accumbens/striatal circuitry roles in eating behavior and in food reward, explorations of limbic interactions with hypothalamic regulatory circuits, and additional interactions of motivation circuits with learning functions. Ann Kelley’s accomplishments inspired other researchers to follow in her footsteps, including our own laboratory group. Here we describe results from several lines of our research that sprang in part from earlier findings by Kelley and colleagues. We describe hedonic hotspots for generating intense pleasure ‘liking, separate identities of ‘wanting versus ‘liking systems, a novel role for dorsal neostriatum in generating motivation to eat, a limbic keyboard mechanism in nucleus accumbens for generating intense desire versus intense dread, and dynamic limbic transformations of learned memories into motivation. We describe how origins for each of these themes can be traced to fundamental contributions by Ann Kelley.
HubMed – eating
Neurobehavioural correlates of body mass index and eating behaviours in adults: A systematic review.
Filed under: Eating Disorders
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012 Dec 19;
Vainik U, Dagher A, Dubé L, Fellows LK
The worldwide increase in obesity has spurred numerous efforts to understand the regulation of eating behaviours and underlying brain mechanisms. These mechanisms can affordably be studied via neurobehavioural measures. Here, we systematically review these efforts, evaluating neurocognitive tests and personality questionnaires based on: a) consistent relationship with obesity and eating behaviour, and b) reliability. We also considered the measures’ potential to shed light on the brain mechanisms underlying these individual differences. Sixty-six neurocognitive tasks were examined. Less than 11%, mainly measures of executive functions and food motivation, yielded both replicated and reliable effects. Several different personality questionnaires were consistently related to BMI. However, further analysis found that many of these questionnaires relate closely to Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism within the Five-Factor Model of personality. Both neurocognitive tests and personality questionnaires suggest that the critical neural systems related to individual differences in obesity are lateral prefrontal structures underpinning self-control and striatal regions implicated in food motivation. This review can guide selection of the highest yield neurobehavioural measures for future studies.
HubMed – eating
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