Abstract
Many studies have linked dysfunction in cognitive control-related brain regions with obesity and the burden of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). This study aimed to explore how functional connectivity differences in the brain are associated with WMH burden and degree of obesity using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 182 participants. Functional connectivity measures were compared among four different groups: (1) low WMH burden, non-obese; (2) low WMH burden, obese; (3) high WMH burden, non-obese; and (4) high WMH burden, obese. At a large-scale network-level, no networks showed significant interaction effects, but the frontoparietal network showed a main effect of degree of obesity. At a finer node level, the orbitofrontal cortex showed interaction effects between periventricular WMH burden and degree of obesity. Higher functional connectivity was observed when the periventricular WMH burden and degree of obesity were both high. These results indicate that the functional connectivity of the orbitofrontal cortex is affected by the mutual interaction between the periventricular WMHs and degree of obesity. Our results suggest that this region links obesity with WMHs in terms of functional connectivity.
Highlights
Many studies have linked dysfunction in cognitive control-related brain regions with obesity and the burden of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs)
We used a multi-scale approach to explore differences in functional connectivity associated with WMH burden and degree of obesity
We found that in the frontoparietal network, the orbitofrontal cortex was jointly associated with WMH burden and degree of obesity, while the parietal networks were only related to the degree of obesity
Summary
Many studies have linked dysfunction in cognitive control-related brain regions with obesity and the burden of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). Previous obesity-related neuroimaging studies have measured the functional connectivity of the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found dysfunctions in cognitive control-related brain regions[3,8,9,10,11]. They found that the frontoparietal and executive control networks responsible for cognitive- and inhibitory-controls were strongly associated with binge eating behaviors[9,10,11]. These results suggest that cognitive control-related brain regions may be important in explaining the behavioral traits of obese subjects Another recent neuroimaging study reported that a high burden of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) was associated with obesity[13].
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