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Hunger hormone: Makes food more attractive
Date:5/6/2008

ld also be looked at as a kind of food addiction. Obese individuals may eat too much largely due to excess hunger. Dr. Dagher and colleagues found that ghrelin worked on regions of the brain known to be involved with reward and motivation, the same regions implicated in drug addiction the amygdala, insula, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and striatum. These areas work together to assign incentive value to objects in the world and to actions, and exert very powerful control over our behavior. They are all targets of addictive drugs (like cocaine and nicotine), and are also targets of feeding signals like ghrelin, explains Dr. Dagher.

Participants in the study were shown images of food and scenery [as a control] before and after receiving ghrelin intravenously during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In addition to analyzing the activation of different brain regions, subjects also answered questions about their mood and appetite before and after seeing sets of images. The effects of ghrelin on the amygdala and OFC correlated with the self-rated hunger ratings.

This study has shown that ghrelin action is more complex than previously thought and furthers our understanding of how drug treatment might be used to combat obesity. This research may also inform public policy. If food is thought of as potentially addictive, this would support action to limit or ban fast food from schools and junk food advertisements geared towards children, in the same way that results proving nicotine to be addictive spurred the current public policy towards nicotine


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Contact: Anita Kar
anita.kar@mcgill.ca
514-398-3376
Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital
Source:Eurekalert

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