August 24, 2017 — Women’s Health summed up a bunch of sensational headlines recently: “Eating this one food might be the trick to losing weight.” That one food, of course, is magic walnuts. And the headlines flowed from some perfectly valid research. There’s just one tiny problem. Weight loss was not the subject of the research. In fact, the […]
August 22, 2017 — Among the complex web of factors that are causing obesity to rise, you will find the rise of drugs that cause weight gain. New antipsychotic drugs – like olanzapine or Zyprexa – are classic examples. They offer important benefits for people living with schizophrenia or bipolar disease. But they have a downside. They can cause obesity and metabolic […]
August 14, 2017 — For several years now, neuroscientists have been looking for connections between obesity and how our brains process rewards. Dopamine receptors play a role in the reward you feel when you eat especially tasty foods. And prior research suggests people with obesity have fewer dopamine receptors. Now new research in Obesity shows that young adults with […]
July 2, 2017 — In the New York Times Friday, psychiatrist Richard Friedman tells us that cookies and meth have a great deal in common. He’s taking up a popular, simple explanation for obesity: Contemporary humans did not experience a sudden collapse in self-control. What happened is that cheap, calorie-dense foods that are highly rewarding to your brain are […]
March 31, 2017 — Brain function can play a role in the development of obesity. And in turn obesity can play a role in brain function. Many knowledge gaps remain, but fascinating insights keep coming. And dopamine – an important neurotransmitter – seems to lie at the heart of changes in the brain linked to obesity. More and more research links dopamine […]
February 18, 2017 — It’s a complex puzzle. But your brain definitely responds in very complex ways when you spot some food. Food marketers know this at a practical level. They spend their lives figuring out ways to make you respond to images of their products. Neuroscientists are figuring it out at a more basic level. Functional MRI images […]
February 5, 2017 — It often starts at about the age of 12. A particular sound – the sound of eating, chewing popcorn, having soup, breathing – triggers anxiety or anger, perhaps to the point of rage. This is not the mild annoyance that anyone might experience from time to time. It’s a condition called misophonia than can turn a person’s […]
January 3, 2017 — Drug addiction changes human brains. One of those changes is a depletion of dopamine receptors. In obesity, dopamine and its receptors may have a role, but many questions remain. And now, new animal research raises yet another question. Could it be that changes in dopamine receptors make physical activity more difficult in obesity? Danielle Friend […]
August 30, 2016 — Pop neuroscience has an astounding assortment of people offering up observations about lighting up the brain when people see appealing food – or any other stimulus that makes their point. But connecting those dots to some real scientific insight comes a little more slowly. A new publication in Appetite does an excellent job of tying together some […]
August 27, 2016 — The popular interest in food addiction is impossible to miss. A search for scholarly articles on the subject yields thousands of references in 2016 alone. A check for news items produces hundreds of thousands. Amazon will serve you more than seven thousand books on the subject. So Nicole Avena and Nina Crowley met with an […]
