Chronic stress exposure may affect the brain's response to high calorie food cues and predispose to obesogenic eating habits

Chronic stress-like syndrome as a consequence of medial site subthalamic stimulation in Parkinson's disease

“…4). Our findings are broadly consistent with a number of studies highlighting the role of anxiety and chronic stress with overeating, enhanced reward processing and obesity (Dallman, 2010;Tryon et al, 2013). Our results are also consistent with other studies showing decreased cortisol in overweight and obese individuals (Champaneri et al, 2013;Travison et al, 2007).…”

“…Conversely, dysfunction of the vmPFC has been shown to be associated with both HPA axis dysregulation and the pathogenesis of higher trait anxiety (Kim andWhalen, 2009), anxiety disorders (Myers-Schulz andKoenigs, 2012), impulsivity, addictions and obesity (Volkow et al, 2012). Accordingly, a recent functional magnetic resonance imaging study has demonstrated a close relationship between chronic stress to exaggerated reactivity to food cues in the vmPFC and to blunted cortisol curve after waking (Tryon et al, 2013). Therefore, it is conceivable that even in the absence of acute adverse effects of stimulation, a more medial STN-DBS contact site may introduce a certain degree of chronic noise projecting to the vmPFC, thereby leading to cortisol and trait anxiety changes found in our study.…”

“…Extensive research in recent years has further revealed the very close clinical and neurobiological relationship among decision-making, body-weight regulation, the reward system and fear-stress circuits controlling the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (Dallman, 2010;Davis et al, 2004;Tryon et al, 2013;Volkow et al, 2012). Nevertheless, while weight gain following STN-DBS and its putative underlying mechanisms have been extensively reported and debated in the literature (Kistner et al, 2014;Novakova et al, 2007;Rieu et al, 2011;Ruzicka et al, 2012a), there have been few studies, with mixed findings, examining the effect of DBS on the HPA axis, stress and anxiety (Chang et al, 2012;de Koning et al, 2013;Novakova et al, 2007;Seifried et al, 2013).…”

The anterior medial temporal lobes: Their role in food intake and body weight regulation

“…In the case of food intake, the amygdala may be the brain structure mediating the excessive pursuit of highly palatable food during stress. Thus, acute stress [138] as well as chronic stress [167] potentiates the amygdala response to food. Tryon et al [167] also showed that in participants under high chronic stress, in response to high calorie food pictures relative to low calorie ones, the connectivity between the amygdala and regions involved in habit formation, reward, and decision making (bilateral thalamus, left inferior parietal lobe, and left putamen) was increased compared to participants under low chronic stress.…”

A Focused Review of Smartphone Diet-Tracking Apps: Usability, Functionality, Coherence With Behavior Change Theory, and Comparative Validity of Nutrient Intake and Energy Estimates (Preprint)

“…We did not evaluate the accuracy of their test, but the concept of integrating routine knowledge/belief assessments, while tracking its effect on changes in the users diet tracking, has the potential to be a useful intervention tool. We also noticed features related to emotions was missing from all the apps despite considerable research that has identified the associations between both positive and negative emotions and diet [23][24][25][26][27]. Moreover, tracking of potential upstream determinants and downstream effects of diet (e.g., hunger, satiety, guilt, stress, happiness, taste) tend be to lacking from these diet-tracking apps, but would potentially be useful to track to assess associations with diet patterns.…”