Inhibition involves the withholding or suppressing of attention or responses to irrelevant or distracting stimuli. We examined the relationship between five experimental tasks of inhibition, represented by two measures of executive, intentional control inhibition and three measures of motivational inhibition characterized by bottom-up interruption of affective and reward/punishment sensitive mechanisms. Associations between these experimental tasks with three self-report measures related to inhibition were also examined. Correlational analyses indicated a small but significant association between the measures in the executive domain , (...) but a lack of associations between the measures in the motivational domain . Both measures of executive and motivational inhibition entered as significant predictors on the self-report measures related to inhibition in simultaneous regression analyses, but not consistently in the expected direction. The results suggest that inhibition is not a unitary construct, and demonstrate an association between experimental measures of inhibition and self-report measures related to inhibition. (shrink)

Background The increasing incidence of people affected by overweight or obesity is a significant health problem. The knowledge of the factors which influences the inappropriate eating behaviours causing excessive body fat is an essential goal for the research. In fact, overweight and obesity are significant risk factors for many health diseases, such as cardiovascular problems, diabetes, etc. Recently, many studies have focused on the relationship between body weight and cognitive processes. Objectives This systematic review is aimed to investigate the existence (...) and the nature of the relationship between excessive body weight (overweight/obesity) and executive functions, analysing cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in order to verify the evidence of a possible causality between these variables. Methods The review was carried out according to the PRISMA-Statement, through systematic searches in the scientific databases PubMed, Medline, PsychInfo, and PsycArticles. The studies selected examined performance on executive tasks by participants with overweight or obesity, aged between 5 and 70 years. Studies examining eating disorders or obesity resulting from other medical problems were excluded. Furthermore, the results of studies using a cross-sectional design and those using a longitudinal one were separately investigated. Results Sixty-three cross-sectional studies and twenty-eight longitudinal studies that met our inclusion and exclusion criteria were analysed. The results confirmed the presence of a relation between executive functions and overweight/obesity, although the directionality of this relation was not clear; nor did any single executive function emerge as being more involved than others in this relation. Despite this, there was evidence of a reciprocal influence between executive functions and overweight/obesity. Conclusions This systematic review underlines the presence of a relationship between executive functions and overweight/obesity. Moreover, it seems to suggest a bidirectional trend in this relationship that could be the cause of the failure of interventions for weight reduction. The results of this review highlight the importance of a theoretical model able to consider all the main variables of interest, with the aim to structuring integrated approaches to solve the overweight/obesity problems. (shrink)