Do Brains of Obese Individuals Respond Differently to Food?
March 1st, 2010Readers of these pages are by now probably quite familiar with the complexity of ingestive behavior and the importance of understanding brain function in relationship to food intake.
A study, published in this month’s issue of Obesity, illustrates how differences in brain function between obese and non-obese people can explain important differences in response to food.
In this study, Laura Martin and colleagues from the Kansas Medical Center used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine changes in brain activity in obese and normal weight adults while they viewed food and nonfood images in pre- meal and post-meal states.
Both in the pre-meal and post-meal state, obese participants showed increased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the medial pre-frontal cortex (MPFC), regions of the brain responsible for the reward response and impulsiveness, respectively.
In addition, activation of the ACC was associated with decreased levels of self-reported dis-inhibition while MPFC activation was associated with increased self-reported hunger amongst obese participants.
These findings clearly suggest that brain function associated with food motivation differs in obese and non-obese adults and may well explain the different susceptibilities to weight gain and variability in response to diet interventions.
Given the emerging science on brain plasticity, it is certainly of interest whether or not these differences in brain function are acquired or are indeed innate. Whatever the case, we need to understand and acknowledge that our brains respond differently to the same food stimuli which easily explain why some people may find it much harder to resist overeating in our current obesogenic environment than others.
As I have said before, the obesity epidemic is simply the natural response to our unnatural environment.
About the Author;
Dr Arya M, Sharma is Professor of Medicine & Chair in Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is also the Scientific Director of the Canadian Obesity Network. He has published widely on the management of obesity and related health problems.
For more information on Obesity visit;
