Adherence
Elevated activation in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) during initial orientation to appetizing food cues predicts future increases in BMI over a 1-year period.
If you find yourself automatically and rapidly orienting your attention to pictures of appetizing food, this neural pattern is associated with a higher risk of gaining weight over the next year. This suggests that training attention away from food cues or reducing exposure to food cues might be a useful strategy for weight management, as behavioral reaction times alone do not predict this risk.
Greater lateral OFC activation during initial orientation to appetizing food cues predicted future increases in BMI.
Why this rating
Prospective fMRI study with a 1-year follow-up in a specific demographic (adolescent girls), though sample size is small (N=35) and effects decreased when outliers were excluded.
Source
Attentional Bias to Food Images Associated With Elevated Weight and Future Weight Gain: An fMRI Study
Sonja Yokum et al. · Obesity · 2011
DOI 10.1038/oby.2011.168
More from this paper
- Higher BMI is associated with greater activation in the anterior insula/frontal operculum and lateral OFC during initial orientation to appetizing food cues, and greater activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and superior parietal lobe during orientation to unappetizing food cues.Good
- Higher BMI is associated with faster behavioral response times (attentional bias) to both appetizing and unappetizing food images, but not to neutral water images.Good
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