Dataset Information

Altered hypothalamic response to food in smokers.

ABSTRACT: Smoking cessation is often followed by weight gain. Eating behaviors and weight change have been linked to the brain response to food, but it is unknown whether smoking influences this response.We determined the influence of smoking status (smokers compared with nonsmokers) on the brain response to food in regions associated with weight changes in nonsmokers.In study 1, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to identify regions of the brain associated with weight change in nonsmokers. BMI and the brain response to a milk shake, which is a palatable and energy-dense food, were measured in a group of 27 nonsmokers (5 men). Sixteen subjects (3 men) returned 1 y later for BMI reassessment. The change in BMI was regressed against the brain response to isolate regions associated with weight change. In study 2, to determine whether smokers showed altered responses in regions associated with weight change, we assessed the brain response to a milk shake in 11 smokers. The brain response to a milk shake compared with a tasteless control solution was assessed in 11 smokers (5 men) in comparison with a group of age-, sex- and body weight-matched nonsmokers selected from the pool of nonsmokers who participated in study 1.The response in the midbrain, hypothalamus, thalamus, and ventral striatum was positively associated with weight change at the 1-y follow-up in 16 nonsmokers. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers had a greater response to milk shakes in the hypothalamus.Smokers display an altered brain response to food in the hypothalamus, which is an area associated with long-term weight change in nonsmokers.

SUBMITTER: Geha PY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3522134 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Altered hypothalamic response to food in smokers.

Geha Paul Y PY Aschenbrenner Katja K Felsted Jennifer J O'Malley Stephanie S SS Small Dana M DM

The American journal of clinical nutrition 20121212 1

<h4>Background</h4>Smoking cessation is often followed by weight gain. Eating behaviors and weight change have been linked to the brain response to food, but it is unknown whether smoking influences this response.<h4>Objective</h4>We determined the influence of smoking status (smokers compared with nonsmokers) on the brain response to food in regions associated with weight changes in nonsmokers.<h4>Design</h4>In study 1, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to identify regions of the brain associated w ...[more]

PMID: 23235196

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Project description:Food-intake control is mediated by a heterogeneous network of different neural subtypes, distributed over various hypothalamic nuclei and other brain structures, in which each subtype can release more than one neurotransmitter or neurohormone. The complexity of the interactions of these subtypes poses a challenge to understanding their specific contributions to food-intake control, and apparent consistencies in the dataset can be contradicted by new findings. For example, the growing consensus that arcuate nucleus neurons expressing Agouti-related peptide (AgRP neurons) promote feeding, while those expressing pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC neurons) suppress feeding, is contradicted by findings that low AgRP neuron activity and high POMC neuron activity can be associated with high levels of food intake. Similarly, the growing consensus that GABAergic neurons in the lateral hypothalamus suppress feeding is contradicted by findings suggesting the opposite. Yet the complexity of the food-intake control network admits many different network behaviors. It is possible that anomalous associations between the responses of certain neural subtypes and feeding are actually consistent with known interactions, but their effect on feeding depends on the responses of the other neural subtypes in the network. We explored this possibility through computational analysis. We made a computer model of the interactions between the hypothalamic and other neural subtypes known to be involved in food-intake control, and optimized its parameters so that model behavior matched observed behavior over an extensive test battery. We then used specialized computational techniques to search the entire model state space, where each state represents a different configuration of the responses of the units (model neural subtypes) in the network. We found that the anomalous associations between the responses of certain hypothalamic neural subtypes and feeding are actually consistent with the known structure of the food-intake control network, and we could specify the ways in which the anomalous configurations differed from the expected ones. By analyzing the temporal relationships between different states we identified the conditions under which the anomalous associations can occur, and these stand as model predictions.

Dataset Information

Altered hypothalamic response to food in smokers.

Publications

Altered hypothalamic response to food in smokers.

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