Children show stronger food craving than adolescents and adults, but they are also able to utilize a cognitive strategy that reduces craving, based on new information published in Psychological Science, a journal from the Association for Psychological Science.
“These findings are important because they claim that we may have another tool within our toolbox to combat weight problems in children,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Jennifer A. Silvers, a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University in the laboratory of Professor Kevin Ochsner.
Most interventions targeted at preventing or reducing weight problems in children focus on changing environmental surroundings – by limiting access to soda, for example, or by encouraging physical activity.
“Such environmental interventions are clearly important, but sugary sweets and tempting treats cannot continually be avoided,” Silvers explains. “If children as early as 6 can learn to use a cognitive strategy after just a couple minutes of coaching, that has huge implications for interventions.”
To learn how food craving and regulating food craving change as we grow older, Silvers and colleagues had 105 healthy individuals arrived at the lab to sign up inside a neuroimaging session. The participants, who ranged in age from 6 to 23 years, were shown pictures of a number of unhealthy but appetizing salty and sweet foods while undergoing fMRI scans.
For some of the pictures, participants were advised to imagine the meals was at front of these and to focus on how the food tastes and smells. For the other pictures, they were told to assume that the food was farther away and also to concentrate on the visual aspects of the meals, for example its shape and color.
After viewing each picture, the participants rated how much they wanted to consume the food they had seen.
Having the participants think of the taste from the food allowed the researchers to evaluate the participants’ typical responses to appealing foods. Having them think of the visual aspects of the meals, a cognitive strategy that redirects attention, allowed they to assess how participants regulated their responses to the food.
The study results says participants of every age group reported less craving once they used the cognitive strategy of imagining the visual aspects of the meals, amounting to a 16% reduction in craving.
Even while using the strategy, however, children’s food cravings remained as stronger than those of adolescents and adults, suggesting that foods are generally more desirable to children.
Analyses from the neuroimaging data showed that age-related reductions in craving were related to increased activity within the lateral prefrontal cortex, that is involved in self-control, and decreased activity in the ventral striatum, that is involved in reward processing.
Children with higher weight-to-height ratios (referred to as Bmi, or BMI) showed relatively less prefrontal activity when using the cognitive technique to regulate food craving than did kids with lower BMI, suggesting the areas of the brain involved with regulating craving may differ depending on body mass.
“We believe this research has implications for a number of people, from basic scientists who are interested in how reward processing changes across the lifespan, to obesity researchers seeking to devise interventions to curb weight problems in children, to parents and pediatricians trying to raise happier and healthier kids,” says Silvers.
To strengthen these findings, Silvers and colleagues are now performing a longitudinal study that examines changes in craving and regulation of craving within the same individuals over time.
And they’re also planning to bring their cognitive strategy into the classroom, working with schools to see whether a cognitive training regimen might have real, positive impacts for children.
“Having this basic knowledge at hand is critical to know how our relationship with food changes over the lifespan,” Silvers concludes.
In accessory for Silvers, co-authors around the study include Catherine Insel of Harvard University; Alisa Powers of Long Island University; B.J. Casey of Weill Cornell Medical College; and Peter Franz, Jochen Weber, Walter Mischel, and Kevin Ochsner of Columbia University.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 NICHD 0691780, F31 NIMH 94056).
