Augmentative effects of sleep on food cue exposure

• Applicants: Ann-Christine Ehlis, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Steffen Gais; Professorin Jennifer Svaldi, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 574694282

About 50 % of individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) do not reach abstinence from binge eating following cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as gold standard treatment. Repeated food cue exposure (with response prevention) is a core intervention of CBT and aims to extinguish conditioned (appetitive) reactions to food stimuli. On a theoretical level it is assumed, that during this extinction process, new memory traces are consolidated and (pre)clinical studies have shown that this memory consolidation is facilitated by sleep. Against this backdrop, the present project sets out to test effects of a sleep condition (relative to a wake condition) following repeated food cue exposure in idiosyncratic binge eating contexts in virtual reality with simultaneous visual, tactile and olfactory exposure to idiosyncratic food stimuli in 68 individuals with BED. Outcome measures include binge eating abstinence rate, trait-like craving, and calories eaten in a laboratory bogus taste test of food exposed and non-exposed in the food cue exposure at the end of treatment and in a three-months follow-up (relative to pre-treatment). In addition, to shed light on the mechanisms of food cue exposure, we will use in situ measurements of cortical blood oxygenation during food cue exposure by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as well as salivation magnitude pre-post exposure.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants