School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China; Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
Appetite. 2019 Nov 1;142:104379. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.104379. Epub 2019 Jul 31.
In China, the rate of spicy food consumption is rising, and chili pepper is among the most popular spicy foods consumed nationwide. Therefore, investigation into spicy food craving is of public health interest and can also provide better insights into the mechanisms that underlie food cravings more generally. This exploratory study aimed to determine neural circuits underlying spicy food craving by comparing brain response to the cues of foods containing chili peppers in extreme cravers and non-cravers defined by scores on the Spicy Food Craving Questionnaire. A group of extreme cravers (n = 25) and a group of age- and sex-matched non-cravers (n = 26) participated in an fMRI event-related cue-reactivity paradigm, during which pictures of foods with visible chili peppers and pictures of foods with no chili peppers were presented. Results showed that extreme spicy food cravers exhibited increased activation in bilateral insula, left putamen, left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, right inferior parietal lobule, right lingual gyrus, bilateral cuneus, left precuneus, left fusiform gyrus, and right precentral gyrus compared to non-cravers when exposed to the cues of foods containing chili versus foods without chili. While we did not observe the differential activation of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala of this contrast in extreme cravers compared to non-cravers. Changes in beta values within the right insula, left putamen, left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and left precuneus were positively associated with subjective spicy food craving during the scan among extreme cravers. In addition, changes in beta values within right inferior parietal lobule was significantly correlated with the frequency of spicy food intake among extreme cravers. These results align with prior work suggesting that the dorsal striatum, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula underlie food craving.
在中国，人们对辛辣食物的消费率正在上升，而辣椒是全国最受欢迎的辛辣食物之一。因此，对辛辣食物渴望的研究不仅与公众健康息息相关，还可以更深入地了解一般食物渴望的潜在机制。本探索性研究旨在通过比较辣椒食品极度渴望者和非渴望者在辣椒食品线索刺激下的大脑反应，来确定与辛辣食物渴望相关的神经回路。一组极度渴望者（n=25）和一组年龄和性别匹配的非渴望者（n=26）参加了 fMRI 事件相关线索反应范式，在此期间，呈现了带有可见辣椒的食物图片和不带辣椒的食物图片。结果表明，与非渴望者相比，极度渴望者在暴露于含辣椒和不含辣椒的食物线索时，双侧脑岛、左侧壳核、左侧背侧前扣带回、右侧下顶叶、右侧舌回、双侧楔前叶、左侧楔前叶、左侧梭状回和右侧中央前回的激活增加。虽然我们没有观察到极度渴望者和非渴望者在眶额皮层和杏仁核的对比中存在差异激活。在扫描过程中，极度渴望者的右侧脑岛、左侧壳核、左侧背侧前扣带回和左侧楔前叶的β值变化与主观辛辣食物渴望呈正相关。此外，极度渴望者的右侧下顶叶的β值变化与辛辣食物摄入频率显著相关。这些结果与先前的工作一致，表明背侧纹状体、前扣带皮层和脑岛是食物渴望的基础。
