Sex differences in brain responses to food stimuli: a meta-analysis on neuroimaging studies.
Andy Wai Kan YeungPublished in: Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity (2018)
The aims of the current study were to update the inclusion list of relevant neuroimaging studies, meta-analyse the neuroimaging data and thus synthesize a brain map showing locations with differential activations between men and women. Published studies to 2017 were retrieved and included into the analysis if they evaluated patients' brain responses to food or eating stimuli with functional magnetic resonance imaging or positron emission tomography and reported activation differences between the sexes in the form of brain coordinates based on whole-brain analysis. Eight studies that comprised a total of 231 participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Men had larger neural responses to food stimuli than women in the anterior and middle cingulate, which are related to emotion regulation. Meanwhile, women had larger neural responses to food stimuli than men in the parahippocampus, the thalamus and the precuneus, which are collectively relevant in the context of promotion of eating. The differential brain responses to food or eating stimuli between men and women may shed light on the neurobiology to help explain the sex differences in eating behaviour.
Keyphrases
- resting state
- white matter
- magnetic resonance imaging
- functional connectivity
- positron emission tomography
- computed tomography
- physical activity
- weight loss
- cerebral ischemia
- human health
- polycystic ovary syndrome
- end stage renal disease
- newly diagnosed
- type diabetes
- ejection fraction
- magnetic resonance
- risk assessment
- randomized controlled trial
- middle aged
- pregnant women
- brain injury
- peritoneal dialysis
- prognostic factors
- insulin resistance
- pregnancy outcomes
- contrast enhanced
- big data
- deep learning
- pet imaging
- breast cancer risk