Brain functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging of obesity and weight loss interventions.
Guanya LiYang HuWenchao ZhangJia WangWeibin JiPeter ManzaNora D VolkowYi ZhangGene-Jack WangPublished in: Molecular psychiatry (2023)
Obesity has tripled over the past 40 years to become a major public health issue, as it is linked with increased mortality and elevated risk for various physical and neuropsychiatric illnesses. Accumulating evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that obesity negatively affects brain function and structure, especially within fronto-mesolimbic circuitry. Obese individuals show abnormal neural responses to food cues, taste and smell, resting-state activity and functional connectivity, and cognitive tasks including decision-making, inhibitory-control, learning/memory, and attention. In addition, obesity is associated with altered cortical morphometry, a lowered gray/white matter volume, and impaired white matter integrity. Various interventions and treatments including bariatric surgery, the most effective treatment for obesity in clinical practice, as well as dietary, exercise, pharmacological, and neuromodulation interventions such as transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation and neurofeedback have been employed and achieved promising outcomes. These interventions and treatments appear to normalize hyper- and hypoactivations of brain regions involved with reward processing, food-intake control, and cognitive function, and also promote recovery of brain structural abnormalities. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of the recent neuroimaging advances on the underlying neural mechanisms of both obesity and interventions, in the hope of guiding development of novel and effective treatments.
Keyphrases
- resting state
- weight loss
- functional connectivity
- bariatric surgery
- white matter
- metabolic syndrome
- insulin resistance
- physical activity
- roux en y gastric bypass
- high fat diet induced
- type diabetes
- public health
- weight gain
- gastric bypass
- working memory
- magnetic resonance imaging
- transcranial direct current stimulation
- obese patients
- transcranial magnetic stimulation
- clinical practice
- decision making
- high frequency
- risk factors
- climate change
- glycemic control
- body composition
- high intensity
- smoking cessation
- risk assessment
- skeletal muscle
- combination therapy
- cardiovascular disease