Social support and overeating in young women: The role of altering functional network connectivity patterns and negative emotions

Abstract

Research suggests that social support has a protective effect on emotional health and emotionally induced overeating. Women are especially more sensitive to benefits from social support when facing eating problems. Although it has been demonstrated that social support can affect the neural processes of emotion regulation and reward perception, it is unclear how social support alters synergistic patterns in large-scale brain networks associated with negative emotions and overeating. We used a large sample of young women aged 17–22 years (N = 360) to examine how social support influences the synchrony of five intrinsic networks (executive control network [ECN], default mode network, salience network [SN], basal ganglia network, and precuneus network [PN]) and how these networks influence negative affect and overeating. Additionally, we explored these analyses in another sample of males (N = 136). After statistically controlling for differences in age and head movement, we observed significant associations of higher levels of social support with increased intra- and inter-network functional synchrony, particularly for ECN-centered network connectivity. Subsequent chain-mediated analyses showed that social support predicted overeating through the ECN−SN and ECN−PN network connectivity and negative emotions. However, these results were not found in men. These findings suggest that social support influences the synergistic patterns within and between intrinsic networks related to inhibitory control, emotion salience, self-referential thinking, and reward sensitivity. Furthermore, they reveal that social support and its neural markers may play a key role in young women's emotional health and eating behavior.