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Clinical Studies and Practice

Brain regulation of food craving: relationships with weight status and eating behavior

International Journal of Obesity volume 40, pages 982–989 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objectives:

Food craving is a driving force for overeating and obesity. However, the relationship between brain mechanisms involved in its regulation and weight status is still an open issue. Gaps in the studied body mass index (BMI) distributions and focusing on linear analyses might have contributed to this lack of knowledge. Here, we investigated brain mechanisms of craving regulation using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a balanced sample including normal-weight, overweight and obese participants. We investigated associations between characteristics of obesity, eating behavior and regulatory brain function focusing on nonlinear relationships.

Subjects/Methods:

Forty-three hungry female volunteers (BMI: 19.4–38.8 kg m−2, mean: 27.5±5.3 s.d.) were presented with visual food stimuli individually pre-rated according to tastiness and healthiness. The participants were instructed to either admit to the upcoming craving or regulate it. We analyzed the relationships between regulatory brain activity as well as functional connectivity and BMI or eating behavior (Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire, scales: Cognitive Restraint, Disinhibition).

Results:

During regulation, BMI correlated with brain activity in the left putamen, amygdala and insula in an inverted U-shaped manner. Functional connectivity between the putamen and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) correlated positively with BMI, whereas that of amygdala with pallidum and lingual gyrus was nonlinearly (U-shaped) associated with BMI. Disinhibition correlated negatively with the strength of functional connectivity between amygdala and dorsomedial prefrontal (dmPFC) cortex as well as caudate.

Conclusions:

This study is the first to reveal quadratic relationships of food-related brain processes and BMI. Reported nonlinear associations indicate inverse relationships between regulation-related motivational processing in the range of normal weight/overweight compared with the obese range. Connectivity analyses suggest that the need for top-down (dlPFC) adjustment of striatal value representations increases with BMI, whereas the interplay of self-monitoring (dmPFC) or eating-related strategic action planning (caudate) and salience processing (amygdala) might be hampered with high Disinhibition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Marie-Theres Meemken and Kathrin Müller for their valuable contribution to a previous version of this manuscript. We are also thankful to Lydia Hellrung who provided assistance with the fMRI setup. This work was supported by the Max Planck Society and the IFB Adiposity Diseases, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany, FKZ: 01E01001 (http://www.bmbf.de) (DM, AV and AH). The work of AV and AH is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; http://www.dfg.de) within the framework of the CRC 1052 ‘Obesity Mechanisms’ (Subprojects A1 and A5). AD is funded by a research grant from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (www.kas.de).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

    A Dietrich, M Hollmann, D Mathar, A Villringer & A Horstmann

  2. IFB Adiposity Diseases, Leipzig University Medical Center, Leipzig, Germany

    D Mathar, A Villringer & A Horstmann

  3. Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    A Villringer

  4. Mind and Brain Institute, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-University and Charité, Berlin, Germany

    A Villringer

  5. Leipzig University Medical Center, SFB 1052A1, Leipzig, Germany

    A Villringer

  6. Leipzig University Medical Center, SFB 1052A5, Leipzig, Germany

    A Horstmann

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Correspondence to A Dietrich.

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Dietrich, A., Hollmann, M., Mathar, D. et al. Brain regulation of food craving: relationships with weight status and eating behavior. Int J Obes 40, 982–989 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2016.28

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