Why Some People Can’t Stop Eating: Scientists Discover Unique Brain Circuit Linked to BMI

A Northwestern Medicine study suggests that a weaker structural connection between two brain regions related to smell and motivation may contribute to higher BMI, indicating that this connection plays a role in regulating feeding behavior. The findings, derived from MRI data, showed that disruptions in these neural pathways could make food seem more rewarding even when one is full, potentially leading to overeating.

The investigators discovered this connection between the olfactory tubercle, an olfactory cortical region, which is part of the brain’s reward system, and a midbrain region called the periaqueductal gray , involved in motivated behavior in response to negative feelings like pain and threat and potentially in suppression of eating., has shown the smell of food is appetizing when you’re hungry. But the smell is less appealing when you eat that food until you are full.

“The desire to eat is related to how appealing the smell of food is — food smells better when you are hungry than when you are full,” said corresponding author Guangyu Zhou, research assistant professor of neurology atFeinberg School of Medicine. “But if the brain circuits that help guide this behavior are disrupted, these signals may get confused, leading to food being rewarding even when you are full. If this happens, a person’s BMI could increase. And that is what we found.

“Understanding how these basic processes work in the brain is an important prerequisite to future work that can lead to treatments for overeating,” said senior author Christina Zelano, associate professor of neurology at Feinberg.This study used MRI brain data — neurological imaging — from the Human Connectome Project, a large multi-center NIH project designed to build a network map of the human brain.

Source: Tech Daily Report (techdailyreport.net)

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