Visual food cue associated reward in obesity using eye tracking

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    The use of eye-tracking technology to assess the visual food cue associated reward in obesity during varying stages of intervention.

  • IRAS ID

    171472

  • Contact name

    Hajra Ashraf

  • Contact email

    h.ashraf@imperial.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Imperial College London

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    Perception of food is a key factor in the decision making process of what we eat. As such, this project will be investigating the link between visual food cues and the resulting decision process. We hypothesise that there is an altered visual food-cue associated reward in overweight/obese. We are aiming to use eye-tracking methodology to identify behavioural responses to visual food cues and compare results between patients before and after treatment for obesity.
    We aim to test this hypothesis with various tasks making up the study. The tasks are briefly outlined below:
    Task 1: Obese patients will be asked to eat a plate of food whilst their gaze behaviour is tracked
    Task 2:Obese and Non-Obese participants will be asked to choose food from a menu whilst their gaze behaviour is tracked
    Task 3: Obese and Non-Obese participants will be asked to choose items to purchase at a supermarket whilst their gaze behaviour is tracked

  • REC name

    Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    15/YH/0442

  • Date of REC Opinion

    13 Oct 2015

  • REC opinion

    Unfavourable Opinion