Research Projects

Obesity is a significant public health issue with widespread clinical implications, including cognitive deficits and age-related cognitive decline. Cognitive retraining can help break the vicious circle of obesity-led cognitive deficits, leading to unsuccessful compliance with corrective eating and activity advice for body weight regulation. Studies from western literature have found that addressing cognitive defects has a favorable outcome in various obesity-related clinical and biochemical parameters. However, there is a lack of data in the Indian context and no well-designed randomized controlled trials that compare the comprehensive cognitive retraining module with cognitive retraining, dietary, and moderate physical activity with the standard management approach. The Comprehensive Cognitive Retraining Module is hypothesized to be more effective in achieving clinically significant weight loss in patients with obesity having cognitive deficits than standard care. The study aims to assess the range of cognitive deficits in patients seeking treatment at a tertiary care hospital in Northern India and develop a comprehensive cognitive retraining module to address underlying cognitive deficits impairing compliance with advised lifestyle-related habits dietary and activity behavior. The proposed components of the comprehensive module will include six sessions of counseling and 45 minutes long individual cognitive retraining sessions focusing on improving attention, inhibition, working memory, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility. An open-level RCT will evaluate the module by randomly selecting 200 obese patients with cognitive deficits in two armMs, with clinically significant weight loss, anthropometric parameters, body composition analysis, metabolic parameters, and different variables of cognitive functioning being studied after 6 months as outcome measures.