What this study adds?
eating behaviour, impulsivity, eating disorder
PATHOLOGY
In sum, this study could demonstrate two different stages in the manual interaction with food in patients with BED and replicate a behavioural pattern that has been found in a previous study with healthy participants: a first stage, where food as a target is recognized faster and movement towards food is initiated faster than for office tools and a second stage, where food is collected slower than office tools, thus reflecting more cautious handling which might be explained by ambivalence or aversive motivational processes like avoidance. However, this behavioural pattern does not change with an ameliorated psychopathology of BED. Therefore, this paradigm does not seem sensitive enough to detect interconnections between eating disorder pathology, impulsivity, eating behaviour, food craving and the behavioural patterns in the VR. More insight into underlying motivational processes in the manual interaction with food and its underlying neurophysiological processes is needed to draw a more overall picture on the associations between neurophysiological, clinical and behavioural markers in the BED.