Training Response Inhibition to Obesogenic Foods
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04659837. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
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Official title
Reducing Cancer Risk by Training Response Inhibition to Obesogenic Foods
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Dietary choices, and in particular, excess calorie intake leading to obesity, are strong, but reversible risk factors for cancer. For example, foods high in added sugars are low-nutrient, high calorie foods that increase the risk of cancer by promoting weight gain. As such, the reduction of sweets is consistent with American Institute for Cancer Research and the American Cancer Society dietary recommendations. Behavioral interventions to alter diet have limited long-term efficacy, most likely because eating decisions are governed by automatic neurocognitive processes that are not addressed in conventional interventions. In particular, the ability to refrain from consuming unhealthy, but widely available, palatable foods, is increasingly understood to depend on inhibitory control, i.e., the ability to cut off action tendencies that are put in motion by innate drives towards rewarding behaviors. Recent work by our team and others have demonstrated that computer-based inhibitory control trainings result in short-term, specific changes in behavior, such as reducing intake of salty snack food, chocolate, and alcoholic beverages. An automatized, home computer-based inhibitory control training offers the potential of an inexpensive and highly disseminable method of lowering cancer risk across wide swaths of the population. As such, we aim to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, mechanism of action, effectiveness and persistence of a home computer-based inhibitory control training. In particular, we hypothesize that a high-repetition training in inhibitory control will result in increased adherence to a low-sugar diet, and that effects will be mediated through improved inhibitory control. We further hypothesize that gamefying the training will improve efficacy because it will boost compliance with the daily trainings. We also hypothesize that the training will be most effective for those starting of with impaired inhibitory control, as well as those with strongest desire for palatable foods and those with strongest explicit health goals. Lastly, we aim to examine the impact of inhibitory control training on secondary outcomes, including on overall caloric intake, and on short-term weight loss. To achieve these aims, the proposed study will recruit 100 overweight and obese individuals who currently eat high-sugar diets, and who wish to improve their diets. Participants will be assigned a reduced-sugar diet for 8 weeks. After a baseline period, participants will be randomized, via a 2 x 2 factorial design, to receive 6 weeks of either inhibitory control training or a sham training, and either a gamified or non-gameified training. The 6-week intervention will consist of 15 minutes per day of home computer- based inhibitory control training, and will be followed by a 1-week booster and then 1-week follow-up period. Dietary adherence will be measured via a food frequency questionnaire and via automated 24-hour food recall. Neurocognitive variables will be assessed pre and post-training in order to test trainings' mechanism of action, and moderation will be assessed through baseline trait measures of explicit health goals, implicit attitudes towards appetitive stimuli, body mass index, and responsivity to food cues.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT04659837
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 125 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 65 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- May 31, 2016
- Primary completion
- Aug 6, 2019
- Completion
- Nov 30, 2019
- Last update posted
- Dec 8, 2020
2016 – 2019
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drexel University | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 19104 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04659837, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Dec 8, 2020 · Synced Sep 2, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT04659837 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.