title: The brain, obesity and addiction: an EEG neuroimaging study.
abstract: Obesity is among the greatest challenges facing healthcare systems with 20% of the world's population afflicted. Great controversy exists whether obesity can be regarded as an addictive disorder or not. Recently the Yale Food Addiction Scale questionnaire has been developed as a tool to identify individuals with traits of addiction towards food. Using clinical and source localized EEG data we dichotomize obesity. Brain activity in food-addicted and non-food-addicted obese people is compared to alcohol-addicted and non-addicted lean controls. We show that food addiction shares common neural brain activity with alcohol addiction. This 'addiction neural brain activity' consists of the dorsal and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, parahippocampal area and precuneus. Furthermore, common neural obesity neural brain activity exists as well. The 'obesity neural brain activity' consists of dorsal and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate extending into the precuneus/cuneus as well as the parahippocampal and inferior parietal area. However food-addicted differ from non-food-addicted obese people by opposite activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus. This food addiction and non-food-addiction obesity dichotomy demonstrates there is at least 2 different kinds of obesity with overlapping network activity, but different in anterior cingulate cortex activity.
authors.affiliation: Section of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgical Sciences, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: De Ridder
authors.affiliation: Section of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Manning
authors.affiliation: Section of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgical Sciences, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Sook Ling
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Leong
authors.affiliation: Section of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ross
authors.affiliation: Section of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sutherland
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Nutrition, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Horwath
authors.affiliation: School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, USA.
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vanneste