Goal-directed and Cue-dependent Behavior in Severe Obesity
Goal-directed and Cue-dependent Behavior in Severe Obesity
The current proposal aims to investigate implicit and explicit priming paradigms for changing
 cue-dependent and goal-directed nutritional behavior in participants with severe obesity
 before and after bariatric surgery as well as in a control group with normal weight.
Food choice and intake is a daily and throughout normal subject. However, for more and more
 people eating habits and the question of food choice are of increasing interest and in
 several cases even a problem. The prevalence of obesity has tripled in the last decades and
 it is even spoken of an obesity epidemic. Life style interventions to lose weight often fail
 on the long run, also because people fall back into former unhealthy eating habits. Bariatric
 surgery is a very effective procedure to reduce weight fundamentally.

 Various factors influence our daily food choice, not all of which are apparent to ourselves.
 Thus, food choice might be goal-directed and therefore conscious and reflective, yet in other
 circumstances the choice to eat something specific might be based on cue dependent processes
 which are automatic and thus difficult to control. The aim of the current study is to
 investigate cue-dependent and goal-directed nutritional behavior as well as the effect of a
 health mindset induction in severe obesity as well as changes in such behaviors due to
 bariatric surgery.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  experimental: severe obesity

 -  control: normal weight

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  impaired cognitive functions, which might conflict with the task

 -  appropriate German