Chen Shuaiyu, Dong Debo, Jackson Todd, Zhuang Qian, Chen Hong
Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.
Appetite. 2017 Jul 1;114:155-160. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2017.03.033. Epub 2017 Mar 23.
Food cravings can reflect an intense trait-like emotional-motivational desire to eat palatable food, often resulting in the failure of weight loss efforts. Studies have linked trait-based food-cravings to increased risk of overeating. However, little is known about resting-state neural mechanisms that underlie food cravings. We investigated this issue using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test the extent to which spontaneous neural activity occurs in regions implicated in emotional memory and reward motivation associated with food cravings. Spontaneous regional activity patterns correlating to food cravings were assessed among 65 young healthy women using regional homogeneity analysis to assess temporal synchronization of spontaneous activity. Analyses indicated that women with higher scores on the Food Cravings Questionnaire displayed increased local functional homogeneity in brain regions involved in emotional memory and visual attention processing (i.e., parahippocampal gyrus and fusiform gyrus) but not reward. In view of parahippocampal gyrus involvement in hedonic learning and incentive memory encoding, this study suggests that trait-based food cravings are encoded by emotional memory circuits.
对美食的渴望可能反映出一种强烈的、类似特质的情绪动机性欲望，即想吃美味的食物，这常常导致减肥努力失败。研究已将基于特质的对美食的渴望与暴饮暴食风险增加联系起来。然而，对于构成对美食渴望基础的静息态神经机制，我们却知之甚少。我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究这个问题，以测试与对美食的渴望相关的情感记忆和奖励动机区域中自发神经活动的发生程度。我们使用区域同质性分析来评估自发活动的时间同步性，在65名年轻健康女性中评估了与对美食的渴望相关的自发区域活动模式。分析表明，在《美食渴望问卷》中得分较高的女性，其大脑中参与情感记忆和视觉注意力处理的区域（即海马旁回和梭状回）的局部功能同质性增加，但奖励区域没有。鉴于海马旁回参与享乐学习和动机记忆编码，本研究表明基于特质的对美食的渴望是由情感记忆回路编码的。
