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Quote:

It really IS harder to say no to cake when you're fat, finds study of obese volunteers' brains

For some people, turning down a chocolate biscuit or piece of cake seems relatively easy while for others, it's an enormous mental battle.

Now, experts have discovered that people with a higher BMI really do require a bigger shift in brain activity to choose healthy food over their preferred snack.

Researchers from Queen's University in Ontario analysed data from three MRI studies involving 123 participants who indicated what they would prefer to eat in different scenarios.

They compared brain activity patterns displayed when participants chose after being instructed to focus on healthy eating.

Analysis revealed that people who were better able to regulate their dietary choices required relatively small shifts in brain states to achieve their goal – and this was highly apparent in individuals with low BMI.

However, participants with a high BMI could not rely on this mechanism and required larger shifts in brain activity to make healthy food choices.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal the researchers said: 'Over 18 per cent of the global adult population is projected to be obese by 2025, showcasing widespread difficulties in adopting healthy diets.

'We examined how brain states change when making natural and regulated dietary choices in an established food task.

'Individuals with lower weight status could successfully modify their eating behaviours while maintaining similar modes of brain activity.

'Individuals with higher weight status could not rely on this mechanism.'

The team said their findings may help explain why some people struggle with controlling their diet while others do not.

However, they said they are not able to determine whether a difficulty making healthy food choices is what leads to putting on weight, or whether putting on weight leads to changes in the brain that makes it harder to choose healthy options.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...-obese-BMI.html

Quote:

Body mass index–dependent shifts along large-scale gradients in human cortical organization explain dietary regulatory success

Significance

Over 18% of the global adult population is projected to be obese by 2025, showcasing widespread difficulties in adopting healthy diets. Why? Using a gradient approach, we examined how brain states change when making natural and regulated dietary choices in an established food task. Individuals with lower weight status could successfully modify their eating behaviors while maintaining similar modes of brain activity. Individuals with higher weight status could not rely on this mechanism, requiring more reconfigurations of food-evoked activation patterns to respond to the challenge of dietary control. Requiring more or fewer reconfigurations of large-scale brain patterns to align behaviors across contexts might explain why some people struggle with dietary control in their daily life, and others do not.

Abstract

Making healthy dietary choices is essential for keeping weight within a normal range. Yet many people struggle with dietary self-control despite good intentions. What distinguishes neural processing in those who succeed or fail to implement healthy eating goals? Does this vary by weight status? To examine these questions, we utilized an analytical framework of gradients that characterize systematic spatial patterns of large-scale neural activity, which have the advantage of considering the entire suite of processes subserving self-control and potential regulatory tactics at the whole-brain level. Using an established laboratory food task capturing brain responses in natural and regulatory conditions (N = 123), we demonstrate that regulatory changes of dietary brain states in the gradient space predict individual differences in dietary success. Better regulators required smaller shifts in brain states to achieve larger goal-consistent changes in dietary behaviors, pointing toward efficient network organization. This pattern was most pronounced in individuals with lower weight status (low-BMI, body mass index) but absent in high-BMI individuals. Consistent with prior work, regulatory goals increased activity in frontoparietal brain circuits. However, this shift in brain states alone did not predict variance in dietary success. Instead, regulatory success emerged from combined changes along multiple gradients, showcasing the interplay of different large-scale brain networks subserving dietary control and possible regulatory strategies. Our results provide insights into how the brain might solve the problem of dietary control: Dietary success may be easier for people who adopt modes of large-scale brain activation that do not require significant reconfigurations across contexts and goals.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314224121