Brain Responses to High-Calorie Visual Food Cues in Individuals with Normal-Weight or Obesity: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Overconsumption of high-calorie or unhealthy foods commonly leads to weight gain. Understanding people’s neural responses to high-calorie food cues might help to develop better interventions for preventing or reducing overeating and weight gain. In this review, we conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of viewing high-calorie food cues in both normal-weight people and people with obesity. Electronic databases were searched for relevant articles, retrieving 59 eligible studies containing 2410 unique participants. The results of an activation likelihood estimation indicate large clusters in a range of structures, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), amygdala, insula/frontal operculum, culmen, as well as the middle occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. Conjunction analysis suggested that both normal-weight people and people with obesity activated OFC, supporting that the two groups share common neural substrates of reward processing when viewing high-calorie food cues. The contrast analyses did not show significant activations when comparing obesity with normal-weight. Together, these results provide new important evidence for the neural mechanism underlying high-calorie food cues processing, and new insights into common and distinct brain activations of viewing high-calorie food cues between people with obesity and normal-weight people.

Pilot study of food-specific go/no-go training for overweight individuals: brain imaging data suggest inhibition shapes food evaluation

“…, 2012 ; Stice and Yokum, 2016 ; Devoto et al. , 2018 ; Stice and Burger, 2019 ; Yang et al. , 2021 ) or deficits in inhibitory or executive control ( Smith et al.…”

Exposure to written content eliciting weight stigmatization: Neural responses in appetitive and food reward regions

“…Inferior temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, and lingual gyrus are involved in visual perception [33]. In an elaborate meta-analysis of fMRI studies of HC food cues conducted by Yang et al [34], they showed that viewing HC food cues consistently resulted in activations in several brain regions, including the aforementioned three areas. These visual areas have also been shown to be activated in response to drugs (e.g., alcohol, cocaine, tobacco) [35] and gaming cues in individuals with Internet gaming addiction [36].…”

Effects of bariatric surgery and dietary interventions for obesity on brain neurotransmitter systems and metabolism: A systematic review of positron emission tomography (PET) and single‐photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) studies

“…After bariatric surgery, reductions in food cue reactivity in brain reward systems using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms, motivation to work, and liking and wanting of high‐energy (HE) over low‐energy (LE) foods have been found, though preferential reductions in actual intake of HE over LE foods in the laboratory setting have not been reported 5,10–20 . In patients with obesity, hyperactivity of the brain in areas associated with reward and hypoactivity in areas associated with cognitive control have been reported 21–24 …”

“…5,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] In patients with obesity, hyperactivity of the brain in areas associated with reward and hypoactivity in areas associated with cognitive control have been reported. [21][22][23][24] Non-surgical interventions usually consist of dietary changes and behavioral therapy, with the primary goal of reducing energy intake, increasing physical activity, and various pharmacotherapies. 4 Although non-surgical interventions may achieve weight loss, most of the nonpharmacotherapy methods lead to weight regain over the long-term because of compensatory adaptations in body weight regulation, which promote rapid weight regain efficiently.…”