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Clinical Studies and Practice

Food image-induced brain activation is not diminished by insulin infusion

International Journal of Obesity volume 40, pages 1679–1686 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/ObjectiveS:

The obesity epidemic appears to be driven in large part by our modern environment inundated by food cues, which may influence our desire to eat. Although insulin decreases food intake in both animals and humans, the effect of insulin on motivation for food in the presence of food cues is not known. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an intravenous insulin infusion on the brain response to visual food cues, hunger and food craving in non-obese human subjects.

Subjects/Methods:

Thirty-four right-handed healthy non-obese subjects (19F/15M, age: 29±8 years.; BMI: 23.1±2.1 kg m−2) were divided in two groups matched by age and BMI; the insulin group (18 subjects) underwent a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic-clamp, and the control group (16 subjects) received an intravenous saline infusion, while viewing high and low-calorie food and non-food pictures during a functional MRI scan. Motivation for food was determined via analog scales for hunger, wanting and liking ratings.

Results:

Food images induced brain responses in the hypothalamus, striatum, amygdala, insula, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsolateral PFC and occipital lobe (whole brain correction, P<0.05). Wanting (P<0.001) and liking (P<0.001) ratings were significantly higher for the food than the non-food images, but not different between insulin and saline infusion groups. Hunger ratings increased throughout the MRI scan and correlated with preference for high-calorie food pictures (r=0.70; P<0.001). However, neither brain activity nor food cravings were affected by hyperinsulinemia or hormonal status (leptin and ghrelin levels) (P=NS).

ConclusionS:

Our data demonstrate that visual food cues induce a strong response in motivation/reward and cognitive-executive control brain regions in non-obese subjects, but that these responses are not diminished by hyperinsulinemia per se. These findings suggest that our modern food cue saturated environment may be sufficient to overpower homeostatic hormonal signals, and thus contribute to the current obesity epidemic.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Ellen Hintz, Karen Allen, Anne O’Connor, Darlene Tempesta, Gina Solomon, Hedy Sarofin, Terry Hickey, Kristen A. Tsou, Edward Gaiser, Christian Schmidt, Ralph Jacob, Mikhail Smolgovsky, Irene Chernyak, Codruta Todeasa and Aida Groszmann for their assistance as well as the subjects who participated in this study. We acknowledge support for the Bioimagesuite software used in the fMRI analysis from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) under grant 1 R01 EB006494-01. This work was supported by in part by National Institutes of Health (NIH)/NIDDK grants (Grant Numbers R01 DK20495, T32 DK 07058, P30 DK045735, K23 DK098286-02, R01-DK099039), NIH/NIAAA (K08 AA023545-02), the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) (UL1 TR000142) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), NIH Roadmap Common Fund (UL1-DE019586) and NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) (R01 EB006494-01).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Endocrinology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA,

    R Belfort-DeAguiar, S Naik, J Hwang, C Schmidt & R Sherwin

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA,

    D Seo & R Sinha

  3. University College London Hospitals NHS, London, UK

    S Naik

  4. Department of Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    C Lacadie & R T Constable

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  1. R Belfort-DeAguiar
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Correspondence to R Belfort-DeAguiar.

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Belfort-DeAguiar, R., Seo, D., Naik, S. et al. Food image-induced brain activation is not diminished by insulin infusion. Int J Obes 40, 1679–1686 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2016.152

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