Neural Vulnerability Factors That Predict Future Weight Gain

Abstract

Purpose of review: The current article discusses five neural vulnerability theories for weight gain and reviews evidence from prospective studies using imaging and behavioral measures reflecting neural function, as well as randomized experiments with humans and animals that are consistent or inconsistent with these theories.

Recent findings: Recent prospective imaging studies examining predictors of weight gain and response to obesity treatment, and repeated-measures imaging studies before and after weight gain and loss have advanced knowledge of etiologic processes and neural plasticity resulting from weight change. Overall, data provide strong support for the incentive sensitization theory of obesity and moderate support for the reward surfeit theory, inhibitory control deficit theory, and dynamic vulnerability model of obesity, which attempted to synthesize the former theories into a single etiologic model. Data provide little support for the reward deficit theory. Important directions for future studies are delineated.

Keywords: Obesity; Prospective; Reward circuitry; Weight gain; fMRI.