Killgore William D S, Young Ashley D, Femia Lisa A, Bogorodzki Piotr, Rogowska Jadwiga, Yurgelun-Todd Deborah A
Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA 02478, USA.
Neuroimage. 2003 Aug;19(4):1381-94. doi: 10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00191-5.
Despite the high prevalence of obesity, eating disorders, and weight-related health problems in modernized cultures, the neural systems regulating human feeding remain poorly understood. Therefore, we applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the cerebral responses of 13 healthy normal-weight adult women as they viewed color photographs of food. The motivational salience of the stimuli was manipulated by presenting images from three categories: high-calorie foods, low-calorie foods, and nonedible dining-related utensils. Both food categories were associated with bilateral activation of the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. High-calorie foods yielded significant activation within the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, thalamus, hypothalamus, corpus callosum, and cerebellum. Low-calorie foods yielded smaller regions of focal activation within medial orbitofrontal cortex; primary gustatory/somatosensory cortex; and superior, middle, and medial temporal regions. Findings suggest that the amygdala may be responsive to a general category of biologically relevant stimuli such as food, whereas separate ventromedial prefrontal systems may be activated depending on the perceived reward value or motivational salience of food stimuli.
尽管在现代文化中肥胖、饮食失调及与体重相关的健康问题普遍存在，但调节人类进食的神经系统仍未被充分了解。因此，我们应用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究13名体重正常的健康成年女性在观看食物彩色照片时的大脑反应。通过展示来自三类的图像来操纵刺激的动机显著性：高热量食物、低热量食物和与饮食相关的非食用器具。这两类食物均与杏仁核和腹内侧前额叶皮层的双侧激活有关。高热量食物在内侧和背外侧前额叶皮层、丘脑、下丘脑、胼胝体和小脑中产生显著激活。低热量食物在内侧眶额皮层、初级味觉/体感皮层以及颞叶上、中、内侧区域产生较小的局灶性激活区域。研究结果表明，杏仁核可能对诸如食物等一类普遍的生物学相关刺激有反应，而腹内侧前额叶的不同系统可能会根据食物刺激的感知奖励价值或动机显著性而被激活。
