http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081110164040.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2008) — A new study in the November issue
of the journal Appetite finds that obese women display
significantly weaker impulse control than normal-weight women,
but between obese and normal-weight men, the impulsivity levels
are nearly the same. The study was conducted by researchers in
the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of
Psychology.

UAB researchers conducted the study to see how obese and normal-
weight men and women differed in their decision-making skills,
specifically in delay discounting, the measure of how much an
individual is driven by immediate gratification versus the
willingness to wait for delayed but greater rewards.

In the study of 95 men and women, UAB researchers gave the
participants the choice of receiving varying hypothetical
amounts of money immediately or fixed hypothetical amounts of
money to be received after delays of two weeks, one month, six
months or one, three, five or 10 years. The hypothetical rewards
ranged from $1,000 to $50,000. The researchers found that obese
women discounted the value of future rewards at a rate three-to-
four times greater than that of normal-weight women, suggesting
greater impulsivity.

Obese men, however, and the male and female control subjects all
showed similar levels of delay discounting. The results were the
same even when the researchers controlled for differences in IQ
and income, both of which have been found to be related to
measures of impulsivity.

One explanation for the differences between men and women may be
found in a personality trait known as eating-related
disinhibition, which is the tendency to overeat in response to
certain situations or cues such as a big display of dessert,
said UAB researcher Rosalyn Weller, Ph.D., the study's principle
investigator. Previous studies have shown that those who score
higher in disinhibition have higher body mass indexes and gain
weight more easily, she said. However, men score lower in
disinhibition than women.

"Our study found that obese men have more impulse control than
obese women. So, obese men may be protected from more impulsive
behavior on the delay-discounting task by having lower
disinhibition in general. Obese women may have the double whammy
of being female and having higher body mass index," Weller said.
T

he UAB researchers are now conducting delay-discounting studies
using functional brain imaging (fMRI). The researchers are using
the UAB Civitan International Research Center's 3 Tesla head-
only magnet to investigate what happens in the brains of obese
individuals who vary in impulsivity as they make decisions.

UAB researchers James Cox, Ph.D., and Edwin Cook III, Ph.D., and
UAB psychology graduate student Kathy Avsar are the co-authors
of the study.

Il mittente di questo messaggio|The sender address of this
non corrisponde ad un utente   |message is not related to a real
reale ma all'indirizzo fittizio|person but to a fake address of an
di un sistema anonimizzatore   |anonymous system
Per maggiori informazioni      |For more info
                 https://www.mixmaster.it