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Altered spontaneous neural activity and its association with cognition, abdominal fat and liver function in children with obesity

Pediatric Research (2025)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

The spontaneous neural activity alterations and their correlations with cognition, abdominal fat, and liver function in children with obesity remains unclear. This study examined the spontaneous neural activity variations in children with obesity using fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) analysis and correlated the findings with clinical data.

Methods

Fifty-nine children with obesity and forty-eight healthy controls underwent resting-state functional MRI. The brain regions with altered fALFF values between the two groups were extracted and the correlations with clinical data were assessed.

Results

Compared with controls, children with obesity had higher fALFF values in the left insula, left superior temporal gyrus (STG), left middle frontal gyrus and right middle cingulate gyrus (MCG). In the obesity group, fALFF values in the left STG positively correlated with visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue area and verbal comprehension index. Contrastingly, fALFF values in the right MCG positively correlated with alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase levels.

Conclusions

Childhood obesity is associated with impaired spontaneous neural activity in brain regions linked to salience, self-control and inhibition, and verbal comprehension. In children with obesity, language comprehension may be impacted by STG’s neural activity, whilst regional neural activity may be influenced by abdominal fat and liver function.

Impact

  • Childhood obesity is linked to diminished verbal understanding and impaired spontaneous neural activity in brain that handle salience, executive function, and verbal processing.

  • The ability to comprehend language can be compromised in children with obesity due to changes in spontaneous neural activity.

  • Regional spontaneous neural activity may be affected by abdominal fat and liver function in children with obesity.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of fALFF values between children with obesity and healthy controls.
Fig. 2: Correlation between fALFF values and clinical variables.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Home for Researchers editorial team (www.home-forresearchers.com) for language editing service. This work was supported by the grants from Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (LY18H070003 and LY19H180003), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82071902), and Wenzhou Science and Technology Bureau (No. Y20220066).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Kun Liu, Zheng Cai.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Kun Liu, Zheng Cai, Mei Huang, Xiao-Yan Huang, Jia-Wen Song, Xin-Jian Ye, Xiao-Zheng Liu & Zhi-Han Yan

  2. Wenzhou Key Laboratory of Structural and Functional Imaging, Wenzhou, China

    Kun Liu, Zheng Cai, Mei Huang, Xiao-Yan Huang, Jia-Wen Song, Xin-Jian Ye, Xiao-Zheng Liu & Zhi-Han Yan

  3. Department of Radiology, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Lishui, China

    Yong-Jin Zhou

  4. Department of Radiology, Ningbo No. 2 Hospital, Ningbo, China

    Shi-Han Cui

  5. Department of Child Healthcare, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Pei-Ning Liu

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Contributions

Each author has met the Pediatric Research authorship requirements. K.L., Z.C., Z.Y. and P.L. had substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis, and interpretation of data. K.L. drafted the article. Z.C., M.H., X.H., J.S., X.Y., Y.Z., S.C. and X.L. had substantial contributions to acquisition of data and analysis of data. Z.Y. and P.L. revised the article. All authors are in agreement with the content of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhi-Han Yan or Pei-Ning Liu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The current study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University.

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Informed consent was obtained from the guardian of each child before study participation.

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Cite this article

Liu, K., Cai, Z., Huang, M. et al. Altered spontaneous neural activity and its association with cognition, abdominal fat and liver function in children with obesity. Pediatr Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-025-03995-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-025-03995-1

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