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Memory and eating: A bidirectional relationship implicated in obesity
In this paper by Parent et al. (2021), the authors amass evidence that explores the links between memory and eating, in both humans and rodents. Humans who suffer from amnesia demonstrate a hindrance in their memory of meals consumed, hunger, and satiety processing, and they tend to overeat and become obese. Healthy individuals have intact memories of their meals, which curtails overeating in the next meals. Research on rodents points to the dorsal hippocampal neural activity playing a role in controlling food consumption in the next meals through the use of meal-related memory, while the ventral hippocampus was found to interact with neuropeptide and endocrine systems to monitor energy status and modulate eating behaviors, in addition to the finding that the administration of hypercaloric diets and subsequent obesity affected rodents’ ventral and dorsal hippocampal processes. In humans, hippocampal derangements and memory impairments were also implicated in developing obesity. The authors comment that these findings demonstrate a potential mechanism that is implicated in the onset and/or course of diet-induced obesity, through hippocampal derangements induced by excess dietary intake, which in turn would lead to overconsumption. Finally, the authors bring forth this point of view to serve as a new perspective on cerebral control over feeding behaviors, the neural pathogenesis of eating-related disorders, and to enhance diet-induced obesity interventions. [NPID: Amnesia, appetite, cognition, diet, episodic memory, food intake, hippocampus, interoception]
Year: 2022
