Study title

This archive contains the materials and results from experiments completed under the project entitled "Interactions between metabolic, cognitive and reward processes in appetite". Study 1 examined the effect of intra-nasal insulin on food intake, appetite and food reward and cognition in women with obesity and lean women. Study 2 examined the effect of the serotonin agonist mCPP on food intake, appetite and food reward and cognition in lean men and women. Study 3 examined the effect of Lisdexamfetamine dimesylate (LDX) in women with binge-eating symptoms. The findings have been published in: Schneider, E., Spetter, M. S., Martin, E., Sapey, E., Yip, K. P., Manolopoulos, K. N., ... & Higgs, S. (2022). The effect of intranasal insulin on appetite and mood in women with and without obesity: an experimental medicine study. International Journal of Obesity, 1-9. Schneider, E., Martin, E., Rotshtein, P., Qureshi, K. L., Chamberlain, S. R., Spetter, M. S., ... & Higgs, S. (2022). The effects of lisdexamfetamine dimesylate on eating behaviour and homeostatic, reward and cognitive processes in women with binge-eating symptoms: an experimental medicine study. Translational psychiatry, 12(1), 1-8. The results of the mCPP study are currently being written up for publication.Recent research has helped us understand the processes that lead us to prefer certain foods over others and the factors that influence how much we eat. We know that through experience we learn that some foods are very rewarding to eat and this learning influences our food choices. We also know that signals relating to the ingestion of food arising from the body (metabolic signals) modulate processes in the brain that are important for determining how much a food is desired. Food is less attractive when we have just eaten for this reason. Our food choices are also influenced by cognitive processes such as attention and memory, for example, when thinking about food we are likely to pay attention to food...