Obesity has been a growing epidemic over the past 20 years. To the knowledge of the researchers, there has only been three previous studies have examined food motivation in healthy weight (HW) youths. Although studies have examined brain activation differences between HW and obese adults have been done, there are no published studies examining the differences in brain activation between HW and obese children.
Students included 10 obese but otherwise healthy children and 10 HW children. The participants viewed pictures of food, animals, and Gaussian-blurred control images during two scanning sessions; one after fasting for 4 hours, and one immediately after eating a uniform meal. The order of meals was counterbalanced. Functional scans involved three repetitions of each block of each stimulus type, alternated between blocks of blurred images.
After eating, the obese group showed greater activation and the HW group to food vs. non-food pictures in the orbitofrontal cortex. Obese subjects also showed significant reduction in brain activation between pre and post-meal conditions only in the superior and medial frontal gyri and thalamus. No changes were observed in the a priori limibic and paralimbic brain regions.
Food images in the study produced significant brain activations in the limbic and paralimbic regions for both obeses and HW groups. The obeses group showed greater activation to food pictures than the HW group in the frontal and paralimbic cortex under both pre- and post-meal conditions.
International Journal of Obesity (2010) 34, 1494-1500
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Interesting, but what are the implications?
ReplyDeleteDenise