Body mass correlates inversely with inhibitory control in response to food among adolescent girls: An fMRI study

Abstract

Self-report and behavioral data suggest that impulsivity may contribute to the development and maintenance of obesity. Neuroimaging studies implicate a widespread neural network in inhibitory control and suggest that impulsive individuals show hypoactivity in these regions during tasks requiring response inhibition. Yet, research has not directly tested whether body mass correlates inversely with activation of these regions during response inhibition tasks. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural activations during a food-specific go/no-go task in adolescent girls ranging from lean to obese. When required to inhibit prepotent responses to appetizing food, body mass index (BMI) correlated with response inhibition at both the behavioral and neural level, with more overweight adolescents showing greater behavioral evidence of impulsivity as well as reduced activation of frontal inhibitory regions, including superior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex, than leaner individuals. As well, activation in food reward regions (e.g., temporal operculum/insula) in response to food images correlated positively with BMI. Results suggest that hypofunctioning of inhibitory control regions and increased response of food reward regions are related to elevated weight.

The role of neural impulse control mechanisms for dietary success in obesity

“…The results of our study complement findings of two longitudinal fMRI studies, that investigated the link between neurobehavioural impulse control parameters and BMI (changes) in non-dieting subjects (Batterink et al, 2010;Kishinevsky et al, 2012). In the first study (Batterink et al, 2010) the authors measured reaction times and neural activity of subjects during a go-/nogo-task and correlated these measures with the BMI at baseline and one year later.…”

“…Among psychological factors, impaired impulse control is believed to play an important role for obesity (e.g., McGuire et al, 2001;Masheb et al, 2002;Weller et al, 2008;Nijs et al, 2010;Batterink et al, 2010;Kishinevsky et al, 2012) as well as for other major health problems, such as drug addiction (e.g., Volkow et al, 2004;Goldstein et al, 2007;Barrós-Loscertales et al, 2011) and alcohol abuse (e.g., Li et al, 2009). The association of obesity and impulse control has been tested in behavioural studies that found that impulse control measured with delay discounting (DD) paradigms or questionnaires is negatively associated with body weight (Weller et al, 2008;Masheb et al, 2002;McGuire et al, 2001).…”

“…They suggest that food decisions in self-reported dieters rely not only on value signals in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), but also on the degree to which control signals in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) exert an influence over these value signals. Studies searching for neural correlates of longitudinal weight changes and impulse control exclusively investigated nondieting subjects and either failed to identify such signals (Batterink et al, 2010), or they were able to identify neural predictors of weight changes but without being able to link them to control behaviour (Kishinevsky et al, 2012). Correspondingly, the complex relation between neurobehavioural parameters of impulse control and dietary success in obese subjects is still unclear.…”

Reward activity in satiated overweight women is decreased during unbiased viewing but increased when imagining taste: an event-related fMRI study

“…In addition, activation of frontal inhibitory regions has been shown to correlate inversely with body mass index (BMI) when participants were instructed to inhibit their responses to appetizing food pictures in a go/no-go task. 22 All in all, these studies show that overweight women exhibit a greater response in rewardrelated regions in response to food cues than healthy-weight women.…”

“…Although the majority of studies investigating food reward-processing differences between obese versus healthy-weight participants have been conducted during hunger or moderate deprivation, 17,[20][21][22]27 the excess of energy intake in obesity is at least partly because of eating in the absence of hunger, also called nonhomeostatic eating. 28,29 Therefore, the current study seeks to investigate food reward-processing differences between overweight participants and healthy-weight ones while they are satiated.…”