Listening to your stomach: Effects of gastric biofeedback training on interoception, eating behavior and eating disorder symptoms
Abstract
Gastric interoception, the sensing of signals from the stomach, plays a central role in regulating hunger, satiety, and fullness and is closely linked to eating behaviors and symptoms of eating disorders (EDs). Gastric motility has been identified as a key mediator of hunger and satiety, with altered gastric rhythms being observed in individuals with EDs. Enhancing gastric interoception by targeting gastric rhythms may therefore offer a promising intervention strategy. This study examined the effects of a novel electrogastrography (EGG)-based gastric biofeedback training delivered using virtual reality (VR) or a two-dimensional (2D) display, compared with a control condition. A sample of predominantly healthy university students (N = 94) participated in four biofeedback sessions over two weeks. We assessed cardiac, gastric, and general interoception, along with self-report measures of eating behavior (emotional, external, restrained, and intuitive eating) and ED symptoms. We expected biofeedback training to improve interoception, eating behaviors, and to reduce ED symptoms, with the strongest effects in the VR group, followed by the 2D group, and the weakest effects in the control group. Linear mixed model analyses revealed that the 2D condition was the most effective, showing the greatest improvements in gastric and general interoception (specifically satiation and fullness sensing, and body listening), as well as intuitive eating. These findings suggest that 2D gastric…
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.