Authors: Silivia Papalini, Nils Kohn
Affiliation(s): Radboudumc/ Donders Institute
Keywords: Gut-Brain axis, reward system, hedonic eating, stress, anxiety
Research question(s):
The overarching objective of this research is to use stress-related parameters, consumption of ultra-processed high-caloric food (Diet intake), and other individual affective states/traits to unravel and quantify multivariate associations between gut microbiome and reward-related brain areas functioning (networks); and to use this join
information as a potential biomarker that can be associated to hedonic eating behaviors.
Link: OSF preregistration
Abstract:
Individuals with obesity and binge eating disorders are characterized by clinical forms of hedonic eating, changes in (food)reward-related brain activity, as well as in gut microbiome composition. These changes are thought to exist as a consequence of an interaction between the overexposure/consumption of ultra-processed high-caloric food, environmental factors including stress, and genetic background. Nonetheless, within the clinical population, there is a concerning individual variability in these changes. For example, there is a large variation in the structure and in the way the reward system responds to food items (and to food items under stress), and we still do not know how this variation affects eating behaviors. In the same vein, it remains largely unknown how the gut microbiome is reorganized by the overconsumption of ultra-processed high caloric food and stress, and which changes in the microbiome affect reward-related brain functionality and connected eating patterns. Most crucially, since the brain and the gut work in concert to regulate eating, the disjoint investigation of imaging and gut microbiome data is likely to contribute to a substantial part of the abovementioned variability. In turn, this problem leads to divergent etiological theories of excessive hedonic eating and to a lack of guidance for (clinical) interventional studies. We believe that to address this issue, integrative research is the right way to go.
It should be pointed out that the abovementioned variability as well as inter-individual variations in hedonic eating behaviors are also present among healthy individuals. In parallel to investigations in the clinical populations, Integrative research can thereby examine the (clinically relevant) neurobiological underpinning of hedonic food valuation and connected decision-making processes in large-scale healthy population, free from the confounding effects of heavy medications, therapies, and illness’s duration.
The project proposed here, leverages on the most innovative methodologies of multimodal data fusion to provide a deep understanding of hedonic eating.