Discussion
motoric and cognitive systems, impulsivity, eating disorder
REGRESSION, PATHOLOGY, STILL
The present study revealed differential effects in the manual interaction with food in VR in a clinical sample with BED. In line with our hypothesis, we found faster movement initiation towards food than towards office tools at the first measurement. In contradiction to our expectation, we did not observe faster handling of food than of office tools, as office tools were actually collected faster than food, consistent with the finding in healthy subjects [A central finding is the faster movement initiation towards food than towards office tools. This first stage of manual interaction comprises a complex interplay between motoric and cognitive systems. On one hand, out of two concurrently objects the target has to be recognized and categorized, on the other hand a goal-directed behaviour towards the target has to be initiated. This is in line with the assumption, that especially in BED, strong impulsive responses towards food stimuli can be observed and those stimuli are processed faster than other stimuli [Concerning behavioural patterns in the manual interaction with food, we tried to identify differential effects in the manual interaction due to generally changed psychopathology of the BED due to the participation in a treatment trial. In fact, the general eating disorder pathology as well as the frequency of binge eating episodes significantly decreased from To have a closer look into the interconnection between psychopathology of the BED and behavioural patterns in the manual interaction with food, we ran a multiple regression with markers of psychopathology, eating behaviour, food craving and impulsivity. The interconnection between the psychopathology and behavioural pattern in the experimental VR task seems to be rather scarce as we did not find any statistical significant prediction of the markers of psychopathology, eating behaviour, food craving and impulsivity by behavioural biases in the interaction with food. Using a repeated-measure within-subject design we were able to have an insight into the impact of changed behavioural markers in the interaction with food on altered markers of eating disorder psychopathology, impulsivity, food craving and eating behaviour on an individual level. Still, we were not able to find an association between changes on a behavioural level and changes on an eating disorder pathology level. This contradicts the assumption, that there is a strong interconnection between markers of psychopathology and task performance in a laboratory setting [