Background:
Excessive weight during pregnancy is experienced by almost 50% of all women, and is associated with negative health outcomes for both the mother and her child. Findings from several systematic reviews and empirical studies neural mechanisms related to executive functioning have found that obesity is associated with poorer inhibition decision-making skills (particularly in relation to food), higher levels of impulsivity, poorer and abnormal activation of brain regions crucial to self-regulation. The aim of the proposed research is to investigate the relationship between inhibitory control and excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) using a food flanker go/no-go task.
Method:
A pilot study of 27 pregnant women participated in the current study. Only women who gained within the recommended IOM guidelines (N=15 healthy GWG (HGWG)) and those who gained in excess of the IOM guidelines (N=9 excessive GWG (EGWG)) were included. The two groups were similar in age, parity, age of gestational weeks at testing.
Results:
The EGWG women exhibited lower response accuracy than the HGWG women for the Go task. However, for the no-go task HGWG exhibited disproportionately greater errors that the EGWG women. The EEG results indicated that the N2 differentiated inhibition between EGWG/HGWG rather than P3 with reduced N2 amplitudes for the HGWG only for food compared to the non-food stimuli.
Conclusions:
The N2 appeared to be the more sensitive of the two EEG components in detecting differences in processing between those who gain within and above the recommended guidelines. Findings suggested that the HGWG were inhibiting their response to food stimuli whereas the EGWG are not. As a decrease in no-go N2 amplitude is thought to reflect a reduction in conflict or early conflict processes the absence of this difference in processing for the EGWG may indicate that this is failing to occur in this group.