Efficacy of weight loss intervention can be predicted based on early alterations of fMRI food cue reactivity in the striatum

Hermann et al. (2019) writes that while the measuring of food cue reactivity through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can help determine people with dysregulated reward brain systems and increased susceptibility to environmental cues that tend to cause obesity, weight loss interventions have more recently been shown to possibly influence fMRI food cue reactivity. This is why this present study assessed whether fMRI food cue reactivity could be used to predict diet-induced early changes in neural processing in the striatum region of the brain that can indicate the outcome of the weight loss intervention. This study examined the food cue reactivity of the participants one month after the start of the weight loss program, as well as their relationship with weight changes observed at the end of the six-month intervention. A significant association was found between BMI changes after the six months with early transformations in fMRI food cue reactivity in the striatum. This study has provided evidence of the diet-induced early alterations in fMRI food cue reactivity in the striatum that can predict the outcome of weight loss interventions. [NPID: perception, reward, dysregulation, environmental cues, obesity, weight loss interventions, striatum, weight loss]

Year: 2019

Reference: Hermann, P., Gál, V., Kóbor, I., Kirwan, C. B., Kovács, P., Kitka, T., Lengyel, Z., Bálint, E., Varga, B., Csekő, C., & Vidnyánszky, Z. (2019). Efficacy of weight loss intervention can be predicted based on early alterations of fMRI food cue reactivity in the striatum. NeuroImage. Clinical, 23, 101803. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101803