NeuroFAST – the Integrated Neurobiology of Food Intake, Addiction and Stress

Abstract

This special edition of OBESITY FACTS contains a series of review papers based around components and themes of the NeuroFAST research programme, which is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework programme (FP7-KBBE-2009-3; grant agreement 245009). The NeuroFAST project was constructed in response to the published call text entitled ‘Stress, Addiction and Eating Behaviour’, which reflected the common ground in terms of neurochemical pathways and brain regions between eating behaviour, including eating disorders, and addiction biology. The project was designed to ask the question ‘Does food addiction exist?’. The growing obesity epidemic is driven by over-consumption of calories, and evidence strongly implicates processes beyond homeostatic energy balance. Accordingly, addiction to food, or more frequently specific food items such as chocolate, is often touted in the popular press as a potential cause of over-consumption and weight gain. This possibility is also the subject of debate within the scientific literature where several lines of evidence substantiate similarities in mechanism, molecule, anatomy, and clinical and behavioural characteristics between over-eating and chemical addiction. For example, functional brain imaging studies in obese and addicted individuals have shown similar activation patterns when subjects are exposed to palatable food or drugs of abuse. However, the validity of the concept of food addiction has not been conclusively proven, and a more solid evidence base is required in this controversial area. The aim of this special issue is to produce a focussed collection of reviews that will be of interest to a range of specialties within the broader scientific community, and that will also aid the NeuroFAST consortium in the generation of targeted research briefs. These are intended to provide European public health policy makers and other stakeholders with digestible scientific information to support future decision making. The contributions to the special issue cover the rewarding properties of food, the molecular and neuroanatomical components involved in food reward and addiction, and how stressors are integrated into Received: March 23, 2012 Accepted: March 25, 2012 Published online: April 21, 2012