HealthDayNews -- The
same area of the brain linked to drug
addiction is also activated by the desire for
food and could be a contributing factor to the
obesity epidemic in the United States.
That claim comes in a study by scientists
at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven
National Laboratory.
They found that a person's hunger and
desire for food significantly increases
metabolism in the right orbitofrontal cortex,
a brain region that controls drive and
pleasure.
"These results could explain the
deleterious effects of constant exposure to
food stimuli, such as advertising, candy
machines, food channels, and food displays in
stores," study author Gene-Jack Wang, a
Brookhaven physician, said in a prepared
statement.
"The high sensitivity of this brain region
to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number
and variety of these stimuli in the
environment, likely contributes to the
epidemic of obesity in this country," Wang
said.
The study appears in the April issue of
NeuroImage.
The Brookhaven researchers used positron
emission tomography (PET) brain scans to
measure brain metabolism in 12 normal-weight,
food-deprived volunteers who were allowed to
smell, view, and taste small portions of their
favorite foods.
SOURCE: Brookhaven National Laboratory,
news release, April 19, 2004
