Abstract
Food cue exposure can trigger eating. Food cue reactivity (FCR) is a conditioned response to food cues and includes physiological responses and activation of reward-related brain areas. FCR can be affected by hunger and weight status. The appetite-regulating hormones ghrelin and leptin play a pivotal role in homeostatic as well as hedonic eating. We examined the association between ghrelin and leptin levels and neural FCR in the fasted and sated state and the association between meal-induced changes in ghrelin and neural FCR, and in how far these associations are related to BMI and HOMA-IR. Data from 109 participants from three European centers (age 50±18 y, BMI 27±5 kg/m2) who performed a food viewing task during fMRI after an overnight fast and after a standardized meal were analyzed. Blood samples were drawn prior to the viewing task in which high-caloric, low-caloric and non-food images were shown. Fasting ghrelin was positively associated with neural FCR in the inferior and superior occipital gyrus in the fasted state. This was partly attributable to BMI and HOMA-IR. These brain regions are involved in visual attention, suggesting that individuals with higher fasting ghrelin have heightened attention to food cues. Leptin was positively associated with high calorie FCR in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the fasted state and to neural FCR in the left supramarginal gyrus in the fasted versus sated state, when correcting for BMI and HOMA-IR, respectively. This PFC region is involved in assessing anticipated reward value, suggesting that for individuals with higher leptin levels high-caloric foods are more salient than low-caloric foods, but foods in general are not more salient than non-foods. There were no associations between ghrelin and leptin and neural FCR in the sated state, nor between meal-induced changes in ghrelin and neural FCR. In conclusion, we show modest associations between ghrelin and leptin and neural FCR in a relatively large sample of European adults with a broad age and BMI range. Our findings indicate that people with higher leptin levels for their weight status and people with higher ghrelin levels may be more attracted to high caloric foods when hungry. The results of the present study form a foundation for future studies to test whether food intake and (changes in) weight status can be predicted by the association between (mainly fasting) ghrelin and leptin levels and neural FCR.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 118374 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Neuroimage |
Volume | 240 |
Early online date | 7 Jul 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
This work was financially supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement 266408 (Full4Health, www.full4health.eu). We thank Dr. Ralf Veit for assistance with developing the approach for selecting good quality fMRI datasets.Data Availability Statement
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in theonline version, at 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118374.
Group level statistical parametric maps are available at https://neurovault.org/collections/9487/
Other anonymized data will be provided upon request for non-commercial research use under a data transfer agreement between UMC Utrecht, who represents the Full4Health consortium partners that collected the data and analyzed the blood samples, and the receiving party.
Keywords
- Food cue reactivity
- appetite
- hormones
- ghrelin
- leptin
- visual food cues
- obesity