ERP correlates of cognitive control and food-related processing in normal weight and severely obese candidates for bariatric surgery: Data gathered using a newly designed Simon task

Although there have been suggestions that altered cognitive control and food reward sensitivity contribute to overeating in obese individuals, neurophysiological correlates of these mechanisms have been poorly in-vestigated. The current study investigate devent-related potentials (ERP) in 24 severely obese and 26 normal weight individuals in fasting condition,usinga novel Simon task with food and object distractors. The study showed that conflict in the Simon task for the food distractor increased with hunger in both group sbut was larger with respect to a neutral condition only in the obese individuals. ERP showed higher N1 amplitudes in both groups for food distractor,reflecting early food processing.TheP2 latency was delayed and the effect of distractors on N2 amplitude was smaller in the obese subjects,reflecting altered neural me-chanisms associated with selective attention and cognitive control, all contributing hypothetically to delay re-sponses election of these individuals faced with food distractor.