Abstract
Altered activity in decision-making neural circuitry may underlie the maladaptive food choices found in obesity. Here, we aimed to identify the brain regions purportedly underpinning risk-taking behavior in individuals with obesity. Twenty-three adult women with obesity and twenty-three healthy weight controls completed the Risky Gains Task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This task allows participants to choose between a safe option for a small, guaranteed monetary reward and risky options with larger rewards. fMRI analyses comparing losing trials to winning trials found that participants with obesity presented decreased activity in the left anterior insula in comparison to controls (p < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Moreover, left insula activation during losses vs. wins was negatively correlated with UPPS-P questionnaire sensation seeking scores. During safe vs. risky trials following a loss, the control group exhibited increased activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) (p < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected) in comparison to the OB group. Moreover, vmPFC response in the obesity group during post-loss trials was negatively correlated with risky choices on the task overall. As a whole, our findings support that diminished tuning of the insula towards interoceptive signals may lead to a lack of input to the vmPFC when weighing the costs and benefits of risky choices.
Highlights
The worldwide number of adult women with obesity has increased from approximately 69 million in 1975 to 390 million in 2016 [1]
Several questions regarding risk-taking among individuals with obesity remain unsettled, including whether differences in risk taking are due to an underestimation of the potential drawbacks of a making a risky decision or whether high-risk behaviors are contained only to the realm of food stimuli
Other research has found that individuals with obesity have greater difficulty inhibiting dominant behaviors and may be more sensitive to reward than healthy weight controls [5,6], thereby increasing the probability of engaging in risk-taking
Summary
The worldwide number of adult women with obesity has increased from approximately 69 million in 1975 to 390 million in 2016 [1]. The combination of high chronic stress and risk-taking has been found to increase the likelihood of visceral fat gain in women over the course of 18 months, thereby suggesting that impulsivity may be a potentially beneficial intervention target for obesity prevention [2]. Several questions regarding risk-taking among individuals with obesity remain unsettled, including whether differences in risk taking are due to an underestimation of the potential drawbacks of a making a risky decision or whether high-risk behaviors are contained only to the realm of food stimuli. Other research has found that individuals with obesity have greater difficulty inhibiting dominant behaviors and may be more sensitive to reward than healthy weight controls [5,6], thereby increasing the probability of engaging in risk-taking. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have linked higher adiposity to hypo-responsivity of somatosensory regions during monetary reward feedback, indicating that blunted activation in somatosensory regions may underpin altered reward feedback learning [7]
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