Identifying the Specific Reward Processes Underlying the Maintenance of Binge-Eating Disorder using EEG and EMA
openNIMH - National Institute of Mental Health
Identifying the Specific Reward Processes Underlying the Maintenance of Binge-Eating Disorder using
EEG and EMA
ABSTRACT
Binge-eating disorder (BED) is the most common and most expensive eating disorder in the United States.
Further, BED is associated with significant medical complications (e.g., obesity) and premature death.
Treatments for BED have demonstrated limited effectiveness, signaling a critical need for improved
understanding of the mechanisms underlying BED maintenance to help guide novel or enhanced interventions.
Reward-related processes (e.g., wanting, liking, learning) are highlighted within the National Institute of Mental
Health’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), and have been increasingly implicated in BED persistence.
However, the specific reward processes that maintain BED are currently unknown. The incentive-sensitization
theory suggests that food reward wanting, in particular, may serve as the primary maintenance factor
underlying BED. Although preliminary data from our group indicate that food reward wanting may indeed play a
critical role in BED maintenance, these data suggest that food reward liking and learning processes may also
contribute to binge-eating persistence, highlighting their potential as novel targets for clinical intervention.
Given this, research is critically needed to systematically evaluate the relative roles of food reward wanting,
liking, and learning using both neural and naturalistic assessment approaches in BED, in order to pinpoint the
specific reward mechanisms underlying BED persistence and guide treatment development. To address this
need, the current proposal seeks to 1) evaluate the concurrent associations between binge-eating symptoms
and food reward processes (i.e., wanting, liking, and learning) assessed at the neural level in the laboratory
using electroencephalography (EEG); 2) evaluate the momentary prospective relationships between binge-
eating symptoms and food reward processes (i.e., wanting, liking, and learning) assessed in the natural
environment using ecological momentary assessment (EMA); and 3) evaluate the longer-term prospective
associations between food reward processes (i.e., wanting, liking, and learning) assessed in the laboratory (via
EEG) and the natural environment (via EMA), with change in binge-eating symptoms over 6-month follow-up.
The research team includes experts in eating disorders, EMA, EEG, multilevel statistical modeling, and the
neural basis of reward. Data from this study will clarify the specific neural and behavioral reward-related
processes that contribute to binge-eating maintenance within BED. Knowledge gained from this study will help
guide the development of targeted therapeutic approaches (e.g., neuromodulation, pharmaceutical,
psychotherapy) that are designed to directly engage empirically-identified disorder-maintaining mechanisms,
which will enhance the efficacy and efficiency of treatments for BED.
Up to $443K
health research