Orbitofrontal neural dissociation of healthy and unhealthy food reward sensitivity in normal-weight binge eaters

Altered connectivity patterns of medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex underlie the severity of bulimic symptoms

“…At the node level, there may be a reversed neural pattern to food stimuli in which those with BN (i.e., clinical patients) exhibit hypoactivation in the lOFC and inferior parietal lobule (i.e., frontoparietal inhibitory control regions), combined with hyperactivation in the mOFC and amygdala (i.e., paralimbic reward areas) ( Simon et al., 2016 ; Uher et al., 2004 ). Evidence from a resting-state fMRI study revealed the opposite connectivity pattern of OFC in binge eaters from the general population; the mOFC connection was positively associated with low-calorie food (LF) reward sensitivity, while the lOFC connection was negatively associated with high-calorie food (HF) reward sensitivity ( Li et al., 2022 ). Similarly, weaker FC between the lOFC and parietal cortex and stronger FC between the mOFC and amygdala have been found to be associated with bingeing and body weight changes ( Ahn et al., 2022 ; Duan et al., 2020 ; Lee et al., 2014 ).…”