Food Craving May Be “Hard-wired” in Brains of Obese People

A new study says that the reward center in brains of obese people may react to cravings stimuli similar to an addiction, unlike the brains of healthy weight adults.

Researchers at the University of Granada, in Spain, and Monash University in Australia, found the tendency to want food may be ‘hard-wired’ into the brain of overweight participants, becoming a functional brain biomarker.

The study involved 39 obese and 42 normal-weight adults, who were each given buffet-style food. Afterward they underwent a functional MRI brain scan, during which they were shown photographs of the food to stimulate craving. Depending on the participants’ weight, different brain connectivity was associated with food craving.

Normal weight individuals saw greater connectivity between the ventral putamen and the orbitofrontal cortex. MRI’s from obese individuals on the other hand were associated with greater connectivity between the dorsal caudate and the somatosensory cortex, which are implicated in reward-based habits and the coding of energetic value of foods, respectively.

Three months later, researchers measured the Body Mass Index (BMI) and found that 11% of weight gain in obese individuals could be predicted by the presence of the increased connectivity between these brain regions.

“There is an ongoing controversy over whether obesity can be called a ‘food addiction,’ but in fact there is very little research which shows whether or not this might be true,” said lead researcher Oren Contreras-Rodriguez in a press release. “The findings in our study support the idea that the reward processing following food stimuli in obesity is associated with neural changes similar to those found in substance addiction.”

He noted that the findings only suggest an association, not a cause and effect relationship between food craving behavior and brain changes. The study could however, provide potential brain biomarkers that could be used to help manage obesity through pharmacotherapies.

Obesity affects more than one-third, or 78.5 million, adults in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [1].