Children from rural communities are at greater risk for obesity than children from more urban communities. However, some children are resilient to obesity despite greater exposure to obesogenic influences in rural communities (e.g., fewer community-level physical activity or healthy eating resources). We have two active projects looking to better understand pediatric obesity:
1) Study of Brain, Reward, and Kids' Eating (BRAKE): Identifying modifiable behavior factors that promote this resiliency could inform strength-based obesity prevention efforts. Eating habits are learned through reinforcement (e.g., hedonic, familial environment), the process through which environmental food cues become valued and influence behavior. Therefore, understanding individual differences in reinforcement learning is essential to uncovering the causes of obesity. We hypothesize that greater brain activation in areas that support inhibitory control in response to food cues will promote resiliency to obesity. To test this hypothesis, we will use a family-risk design and enroll 76, 8-9-year-old children of varying weight status from rural Pennsylvania. Methods will include reinforcement learning and value-modulated attention tasks, dual x-ray absorptiometry to assess adiposity, and neural food cue reactivity from functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We are currently following children over 1 year to see if any of these processes predict changes in weight status
2) Home Observation of Meals and Environment (HOME) Bytes: Identifying modifiable enivronmental factors that promote resiliency could inform family-based prevention efforts. Therefore, we are conduncting a virtual study where families record their child eating 3 typical meals at home and tell us about their home food rules, the foods they have at home, and take picutures of all home food storage locations (e.g., fridge, pantry). We will use the meal videos to understand child eating behaviors (e.g., eating rate, bite size) and are working toward developing an AI model to automatically code bites of food from the videos. We will also be examine the home food environment and parental food practices.
Check out our lab website for more information: https://sites.psu.edu/alainapearce/
As a research assistant, you will be trained to prepare laboratory test meals, measure child food intake, and code child eating behaviors from their video-taped meals. Additionally, you will be trained to administer cognitive tasks on the computer, assist with collection of fNIRS data, and perform data quality checks.
Please contact Dr. Alaina Pearce (azp271@psu.edu) for application form.