An Examination Of Homeostasis And Food Desires In Obesity Using Functional Mri

Abstract

It has been discovered that food intake in obesity is less dependent on homeostatic demands and more reward-based. Therefore, abnormal processing in reward- and control-related brain areas was found in obesity in earlier research on the neural processing of food signals. This study examined the impact of glucose metabolism on the neural response during the control of food seeking in obese people in order to better explore the relationship between homeostasis and food intake. A nasogastric tube was used to deliver either water or glucose directly into the stomach of twenty-five normal-weight and twenty-five obese women, who were then checked twice. Before each visit, participants had to abstain from eating for sixteen hours and were blinded to the kind of infusion. The impact of intestinal glucose load on the neural response during the control of food appetite was examined using an event-related fMRI paradigm. When comparing individuals with obesity to healthy controls, a 2 × 2 mixed-model ANOVA showed that desire modulation was linked to increased activity in fronto-parietal areas. Nonetheless, this impact was noted apart from homeostatic satiety. Regression analysis showed that after receiving a water infusion, those with obesity saw a decrease in food cravings and a rise in lingual gyrus activity. In persons with obesity, the neuronal response during the regulation of food appetite is connected with greater neural cognitive top-down control and higher visual food processing. Our findings suggest that homeostasis has less of an impact on brain processing during food cravings in obesity since this discovery was unaffected by satiety state.