How Altered Gut-Brain-Axis Influences Food Choices: Part 1 (Pilot-Study)

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The overall aim of this project is to elucidate the changes in food behaviour among obese adults undergoing bariatric surgery. To this end, the study consists of an experimental setting combining neurobehavioural tasks, computational modelling and functional brain imaging. The main objective is to a...

The overall aim of this project is to elucidate the changes in food behaviour among obese adults undergoing bariatric surgery. To this end, the study consists of an experimental setting combining neurobehavioural tasks, computational modelling and functional brain imaging. The main objective is to assess changes in neural coding and food behaviour in obese adults undergoing bariatric surgery. The investigators hypothesize that changes in the subjective neural processes of nutritional food attributes are related to changes in the respective neural coding structure. More specifically, if a given attribute has a more precise (i.e., more structured) neural representation after bariatric surgery, then these attributes should exert more weight during dietary choices (and vice versa for more imprecise representations). The further objective is to elucidate if neural coding and food behaviour differ between obese adults and lean adults, and to see whether these differences tend to be reduced post-surgery among obese participants. The investigators hypothesize that subjective neural processes of nutritional food attributes differ between the obese and control participants, showing an unhealthier pattern among obese participants. To this aim, the outcomes will be compared between groups (surgery group and control group) and the changes pre- and post- surgery will be assessed for the surgery group.

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