Alterations in brain network organization in adults with obesity as compared to healthy-weight individuals and seniors

Abstract

Life expectancy and obesity rates have drastically increased in recent years. An unhealthy weight is related to longlasting biological deregulations that might compromise the normal course of development and jeopardize the so-called "successful aging". The aim of the current study was to test whether an obesity status could mimic the functional organization of an otherwise healthy aged brain. Thus, the current study included adults with (N = 32, mean age 34.5 ± 6.49) and without obesity (N = 34, mean age 32.7 ± 6.79) as well as adolescents with obesity (N = 30, mean age 15.3 ± 2.64) and normal-weight (N = 31, mean age 15.6 ± 2.60). A sample of stroke-free non-obese and non-demented seniors was also entered (N = 32, mean age 66.1 ± 7.43). Participants underwent resting-state MRI acquisition and graph-based measurements of segregation, integration and robustness (i.e., mean degree and strength) were calculated. Obesity in adults was followed by a broad pattern of loses in robustness when compared to healthy-weight adults and seniors, as well as increases in network segregation relative to elders. Differences in adolescents followed the same direction yet they did not survive multiple comparison adjustment. No interaction emerged when exploring the transition from childhood to adulthood accounting for body-weight status. Altogether, and yet more research is needed, an obesity status could negatively render network resilience and compromise the normal course of aging. Obesity | Aging | Maturation | Resting-state | Graph-theory

Body mass variations relate to fractionated functional brain hierarchies

“…Longitudinal evidence also points to an association between BMI changes and connectivity of reward and frontoparietal networks, both when studying healthy individuals, without any interventions (Park et al, 2019a) and in work that administered repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Kim et al, 2019). Beyond local connectivity, a more recent study reported an increased modular segregation in individuals with obesity compared to individuals with healthy weight, suggesting a shift of brain organization towards more lattice like functional networks as BMI increases (Ottino-González et al, 2020). A more segregated network organization has previously been reported in several psychiatric and neurological diseases, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Cao et al, 2014(Cao et al, , 2016(Cao et al, , 2013Liao et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2009), Alzheimer's disease (Bai et al, 2012;Dai and He, 2014;Liao et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2012), as well as impulsivity (Davis et al, 2013).…”