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Brain reward responses to food stimuli among female monozygotic twins discordant for BMI

Doornweerd, S; De Geus, EJ; Barkhof, F; Van Bloemendaal, L; Boomsma, DI; Van Dongen, J; Drent, ML; ... IJzerman, RG; + view all (2017) Brain reward responses to food stimuli among female monozygotic twins discordant for BMI. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10.1007/s11682-017-9711-1. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Obese individuals are characterized by altered brain reward responses to food. Despite the latest discovery of obesity-associated genes, the contribution of environmental and genetic factors to brain reward responsiveness to food remains largely unclear. Sixteen female monozygotic twin pairs with a mean BMI discordance of 3.96 ± 2.1 kg/m(2) were selected from the Netherlands Twin Register to undergo functional MRI scanning while watching high- and low-calorie food and non-food pictures and during the anticipation and receipt of chocolate milk. In addition, appetite ratings, eating behavior and food intake were assessed using visual analog scales, validated questionnaires and an ad libitum lunch. In the overall group, visual and taste stimuli elicited significant activation in regions of interest (ROIs) implicated in reward, i.e. amygdala, insula, striatum and orbitofrontal cortex. However, when comparing leaner and heavier co-twins no statistically significant differences in ROI-activations were observed after family wise error correction. Heavier versus leaner co-twins reported higher feelings of hunger (P = 0.02), cravings for sweet food (P = 0.04), body dissatisfaction (P < 0.05) and a trend towards more emotional eating (P = 0.1), whereas caloric intake was not significantly different between groups (P = 0.3). Our results suggest that inherited rather than environmental factors are largely responsible for the obesity-related altered brain responsiveness to food. Future studies should elucidate the genetic variants underlying the susceptibility to reward dysfunction and obesity. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02025595.

Type: Article
Title: Brain reward responses to food stimuli among female monozygotic twins discordant for BMI
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s11682-017-9711-1
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-017-9711-1
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Keywords: Food, Genetic, Monozygotic, Obesity, Reward, fMRI
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Brain Repair and Rehabilitation
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1564459
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