Food Addiction Acts in Brain as Drug Addiction Does??? - FYI

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Whether eating food or simply craving it, food lovers appear to have neural

activity similar to that of substance abusers, a small study suggests.

The study of 48 young women (mean age 20) found that while the women were

anticipating drinking a chocolate milkshake, those with higher food

addiction scores had greater activation in brain regions associated with

reward than those with lower scores, Gearhardt, MS, of Yale, and

colleagues reported in the *Archives of General Psychiatry.*

And when the women actually got to drink the milkshake, they had reduced

activation of inhibitory brain regions seen on functional magnetic resonance

imaging (fMRI).

" Similar patterns of neural activation are implicated in addictive-like

eating behavior and substance abuse and dependence, " Gearhardt and

colleagues wrote.

Prior research has shown that there's an addictive process in the

development of obesity, the researchers noted.

Food and drug use both result in dopamine release in the brain's mesolimbic

regions, and the degree of release correlates with subjective reward from

both food and drug use.

Yet no studies have examined the neural correlates of addictive-like eating

behavior, the researchers said.

So they hypothesized that higher scores on a food addiction scale (the Yale

Food Addiction Scale) would be associated with patterns of neural activation

that are similar to substance dependence.

Gearhardt and colleagues enrolled 48 healthy young women with body mass

indexes (BMI) ranging from lean to obese (24 to 40), who had been recruited

for a long-term healthy weight maintenance trial.

Each woman had fMRI as they were exposed to two conditions -- anticipation

of a rich chocolate milkshake versus a tasteless control solution, and

consumption of the milkshake versus the tasteless control.

The researchers found that food scores correlated with greater activation in

the anterior cingulate cortex, medial orbitofrontal cortex, and the amygdala

when women anticipated drinking the milkshake (*P*<0.05).

The anterior cingulate cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex have both been

implicated in motivation to eat, as well as with intake of drugs in patients

with substance abuse, while the amygdala is also associated with increased

motivation to eat.

Women with higher food addiction scores also had more activation in other

regions associated with the anticipation of reward -- the dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex and the caudate.

Yet there was less activation in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex when the

women actually drank the milkshake -- an area associated with inhibitory

control and ability to suppress previously rewarded responses.

Thus, the reduced activation " may be related to either less inhibitory

control during intake of palatable food or a reduced satiety response during

palatable food intake, " Gearhardt and colleagues wrote.

Still, the study showed no significant associations between food addiction

scores and BMI.

Those scores, however, were correlated with emotional eating and external

eating, so the findings could have something to do with the fact that the

sample was young and more metabolically healthy, the researchers added.

Gearhardt's group concluded that the study " supports the theory that

compulsive food consumption may be driven in part by an enhanced

anticipation of the rewarding properties of food, " and that eating " may

override desires to limit caloric food consumption ... resulting in

disinhibited food consumption. "

The researchers noted that their study had some important limitations.

For one thing, they excluded participants with eating disorders and Axis I

psychiatric disorders, so few participants met the clinically significant

distress or impairment criteria of the YFAS, required for a diagnosis of

food addiction.

Therefore, the researchers said their work should be considered a

conservative test, and future studies of the neural correlates of food

addiction should include participants with more severe scores.

The team also did not measure hunger (although participants were asked to

refrain from eating four to six hours prior to their fMRI session) and noted

that fasting and hunger are associated with similar patterns of neural

response, possibly confounding their results.

They noted the relatively small sample size and said the results would not

be generalizable to men.

Gearhard and colleagues suggested that future studies should be longitudinal

in design to allow for " a greater understanding of the antecedents and

consequences " of true food addiction.

*Primary source: *Archives of General Psychiatry

Source reference:

Gearhardt AN, et al " Neural correlates of food addiction " *Arch Gen

Psych*2011; DOI:

10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.32.<http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abst\

ract/archgenpsychiatry.2011.32v1>

--

Ortiz, MS, RD

*The FRUGAL Dietitian* <http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com>

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