ArticleQuarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)2016
Higher body mass index is associated with episodic memory deficits in young adults.
Article in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of dietary fat manipulation on cognition in mice and rats: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ open science · 2020Pooled it
- Obesity and episodic memory function.The journal of physiological sciences : JPS · 2018Pooled it
- Effects of Zinc Supplementation on Inflammatory and Cognitive Parameters in Middle-Aged Women with Overweight or Obesity.Nutrients · 2023Trial
- The role of memory ability, depth and mode of recall in the impact of memory on later consumption.Appetite · 2020Trial
- Associations between polygenic risk for obesity, body mass index and cognitive performance: Age as moderating factor.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Memory Performance in Adolescents Living With Obesity: Brain Activation During Encoding and Retrieval in a Case-Control Study.Obesity science & practice · 2026Article
- The association between medial prefrontal GABA concentration and memory performance is disrupted in human with a high body mass index.Brain imaging and behavior · 2026Article
- A feasibility study of the effects of concurrent transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on mindfulness training in adults living with overweight or obesity: the MINDED trial protocol.Pilot and feasibility studies · 2026Article
- Effects of Digital Neurohabilitation on Attention and Memory in Patients with a Diagnosis of Pediatric Obesity: Case Series.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- A pathophysiological intersection between metabolic biomarkers and memory: a longitudinal study in the STZ-induced diabetic mouse model.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Reprogramming energy homeostasis in children with overweight through cognitive training and social interaction. A study protocol to estimate leptin sensitivity.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Article
- Neuroanatomy, episodic memory and inhibitory control of persian-kurdish simultaneous bilinguals.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Examining the bidirectional longitudinal associations between body mass index and episodic memory following bariatric surgery.Surgery for obesity and related diseases : official journal of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery · 2024Article
- Body composition is related to cognitive function among young adults in Ghana.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Associations between body mass index and episodic memory for recent eating, mindful eating, and cognitive distraction: A cross-sectional study.Obesity science & practice · 2024Article
- The dynamic influence of nutrition on prolonged cognitive healthspan across the life course: A perspective review.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
- Body mass index and cognitive functioning decline: Exploring the relationship.Journal of education and health promotion · 2024Article
- Review
- Risk assessment of low cognitive performance among fishermen's children in Malaysia.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2023Article
- Is there a role for higher cognitive processes in the development of obesity in humans?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Obesity has become an international health crisis. There is accumulating evidence that excess bodyweight is associated with changes to the structure and function of the brain and with a number of cognitive deficits. In particular, research suggests that obesity is associated with hippocampal and frontal lobe dysfunction, which would be predicted to impact memory. However, evidence for such memory impairment is currently limited. We hypothesised that higher body mass index (BMI) would be associated with reduced performance on a test of episodic memory that assesses not only content, but also context and feature integration. A total of 50 participants aged 18-35 years, with BMIs ranging from 18 to 51, were tested on a novel what-where-when style episodic memory test: the "Treasure-Hunt Task". This test requires recollection of object, location, and temporal order information within the same paradigm, as well as testing the ability to integrate these features into a single event recollection. Higher BMI was associated with significantly lower performance on the what-where-when (WWW) memory task and all individual elements: object identification, location memory, and temporal order memory. After controlling for age, sex, and years in education, the effect of BMI on the individual what, where, and when tasks remained, while the WWW dropped below significance. This finding of episodic memory deficits in obesity is of concern given the emerging evidence for a role for episodic cognition in appetite regulation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.