Resting state hypothalamic response to glucose predicts glucose-induced attenuation in the ventral striatal response to food cues.

This study aimed to understand whether changes in the hypothalamic activity in response to glucose-induced metabolic signals are linked to food-cue reactivity within brain areas involved in reward processing. We combined two neuroimaging modalities (Arterial Spin Labeling and Blood Oxygen Level Dependent) to measure glucose-induced changes in hypothalamic cerebral blood flow (CBF) and food-cue task induced changes in brain activity within reward-related regions. Twenty-five participants underwent a MRI session following glucose ingestion and a subset of twenty individuals underwent an additional water session on a separate day as a control condition (drink order randomized). Hunger was assessed before and after drink consumption. We observed that individuals who had a greater reduction in hypothalamic CBF exhibited a greater reduction in left ventral striatum food cue reactivity (Spearman's rho = 0.46, P = 0.048) following glucose vs. water ingestion. These results are the first to use multimodal imaging to demonstrate a link between hypothalamic metabolic signaling and ventral striatal food cue reactivity.
PMID: 28551112 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Appetite - May 24, 2017 Category: Nutrition Authors: Luo S, Melrose AJ, Dorton H, Alves J, Monterosso JR, Page KA Tags: Appetite Source Type: research