Oxytocin enhances cognitive control of food craving in women

Abstract

In developed countries, obesity has become an epidemic resulting in enormous health care costs for society and serious medical complications for individuals. The homeostatic regulation of food intake is critically dependent on top-down control of reward-driven food craving. There is accumulating evidence from animal studies that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is involved in regulating hunger states and eating behavior, but whether OXT also contributes to cognitive control of food craving in humans is still unclear. We conducted a counter-balanced, double-blind, within-subject, pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging experiment involving 31 healthy women who received 24 IU of intranasal OXT or placebo and were scanned twice while they were exposed to pictures of palatable food. The participants were instructed either to imagine the immediate consumption or to cognitively control the urge to eat the food. Our results show a trend that OXT specifically reduced food craving in the cognitive control condition. On the neural level, these findings were paralleled by an increase of activity in the middle and superior frontal gyrus, precuneus, and cingulate cortex under OXT. Interestingly, the behavioral OXT effect correlated with the OXT-induced changes in the prefrontal cortex and precuneus. Collectively, the present study provides first evidence that OXT plays a key role in the cognitive regulation of food craving in women by strengthening activity in a broad neurocircuitry implicated in top-down control and self-referential processing. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4276-4285, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The effects of oxytocin on eating behaviour and metabolism in humans

“…In addition, the preferential effects of intranasal administration of oxytocin in reducing consumption of more palatable foods, such as fats and carbohydrates, by men 51,52,76 is consistent with the concept that oxytocin might inhibit food intake in part by modulating reward-related food motivation and/or impulse control neurocircuitry. This concept is in line with a study published in 2016 showing that a single intranasal dose of 24 IU oxytocin increased activation of brain circuitry involved in cognitive control (detected using fMRI) and, at the trend level, reduced food craving when women were asked to cognitively control the urge to eat while viewing images of palatable foods 80 . This finding is also consistent with animal studies demonstrating that administration of oxytocin to the VTA 56 or nucleus accumbens 81 , which are regions of the brain involved in reward that receive oxytocin projections from the PVN 4 and express oxytocin receptors 23-25 , inhibits sucrose intake.…”

Bariatric surgery in obese patients reduced resting connectivity of brain regions involved with self‐referential processing

“…We predicted that LSG surgery would result in decreased FCD in regions, implicated in impaired self-control and self-referential processing (Northoff et al, 2006;Striepens et al, 2016) (VMPFC, DMPFC, precuneus), memory (HIPP), and interoception (insula), increasing connectivity of self-referential processing regions with regions involved with executive function/self-regulation (DLPFC, caudate). We predicted that LSG surgery would result in decreased FCD in regions, implicated in impaired self-control and self-referential processing (Northoff et al, 2006;Striepens et al, 2016) (VMPFC, DMPFC, precuneus), memory (HIPP), and interoception (insula), increasing connectivity of self-referential processing regions with regions involved with executive function/self-regulation (DLPFC, caudate).…”

Oxytocin enhances the pain‐relieving effects of social support in romantic couples

“…For instance, we have found that in the absence of social support, intranasal OXT may produce detrimental effects and enhance the subjective experience of psychosocial stress (Eckstein et al, 2014). Additionally, OXT strengthens top-down cognitive control strengthens top-down cognitive control by enhancing activity in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) (Eckstein et al, 2015;Striepens et al, 2016). Additionally, OXT strengthens top-down cognitive control strengthens top-down cognitive control by enhancing activity in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) (Eckstein et al, 2015;Striepens et al, 2016).…”