Mobile Attention Retraining in Overweight Female Adolescents

Summary

Background:

People are constantly exposed to unhealthy foods. Some studies of adults show that training attention away from unhealthy foods might reduce overeating. Researchers want to see what happens in the brain when teens train their attention away from food through a program on a smartphone.

Objective:

To study the relationship between eating patterns, body weight, and how the brain reacts to different images.

Eligibility:

Right-handed females ages 12-17 who are overweight (Body Mass Index at or above the 85th percentile for age).

Design:

Participants will have 6 visits over about 8 months.

Visit 1: participants will be screened with:

Height, weight, blood pressure, and waist size measurements

Medical history

Physical exam

Urine sample

DXA scan. Participants will lie on a table while a very small dose of x-rays passes through the body.

Questions about their general health, social and psychological functioning, and eating habits

Parents or guardians of minor participants will answer questions about their child s functioning and demographic data.

Before visits 2-6, participants will not eat or drink for about 12 hours. These visits will include some or all of these procedures:

Blood drawn

MRI scan. Participants will lie on a stretcher that slides in and out of a metal cylinder in a strong magnetic field. A device will be placed over the head.

Meals provided. Participants will fill out rating forms.

Simple thinking tasks

A cone containing magnetic field detectors placed onto the head

Medical history

Physical exam

Urine sample

Participants will be assigned to a 2-week smartphone program that involves looking at pictures. Participants will complete short tasks and answer some questions about their eating habits and mood on the smartphone.

Conditions

• Obesity
• Overweight
• Binge Eating
• Healthy Volunteers

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Attention Bias Retraining

Attention retraining program on smartphone where the probe always replaces the neutral picture. There is a perfect correlation between picture type and probe location.

BEHAVIORAL

Sham Comparator: AB Control

Sham Comparator "training" where the probe randomly replaces the neutral or food pictures. There is no correlation between picture type and probe location

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  lead NIH

Principal Investigators

• Jack A Yanovski, M.D. · Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

QUADRUPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

21 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-02-10

Primary Completion

2023-06-08

Completion

2024-11-13

Countries

• United States

Study Locations