Tania Alexandra Couto
University of Macau, China
Title: Dorsolateral and orbitofrontal activation in prefrontal cortex during a n-back task applied for food addiction disorder: A near-infrared spectroscopy study
Biography
Biography: Tania Alexandra Couto
Abstract
The present study investigated the neural correlates of prefrontal dysfunction in food addiction disorder activated by a n-back task in undergraduate and graduate students. We used a neuro-vascular coupling measure captured by near-infrared spectroscopy recordings with n-back paradigm in 2-back and 3-back conditions. We found that middle frontal gyrus (dorsolateral PFC – BA46) and frontopolar (orbitofrontal cortex BA 10) areas were activated, highlighting significant differences in three channels. Furthermore, to support the main hypothesis, in the behavioral performance students with low results in food addiction scale (less than three symptoms) were related with health conditions activated by n-back task, specifically the 2-back health condition. These results suggest that undergraduate and graduate students are sensitive to highly palatable food and the activation of BA 46 and BA 10 may correlate with unhealthy food pattern, which highlight the possibility of biomarker for food addiction disorder related to the dysfunction of working memory in PFC captured by nirs recordings. Even that the record of junk items has been presented higher activations during a 3-back task, junk conditions are not always related with inefficient emotional regulation underlying the binge eating events referred to in the YSAS and traditionally expected by the literature. This evidence could reflect that other patterns of eating behaviour and strategies of emotional regulation related should be more explored and redefined among students populations exposed to risky eating behaviors