Dietary Restraint Related to Body Weight Maintenance and Neural Processing in Value-Coding Areas in Adolescents

Yuko Nakamura; Shuntaro Ando; Syudo Yamasaki; Naohiro Okada; Atsushi Nishida; Kiyoto Kasai; Saori Tanaka; Hironori Nakatani; Shinsuke Koike

doi:10.1093/jn/nxab068

Dietary Restraint Related to Body Weight Maintenance and Neural Processing in Value-Coding Areas in Adolescents

J Nutr. 2021 Jul 1;151(7):2059-2067. doi: 10.1093/jn/nxab068.

Authors

Yuko Nakamura¹, Shuntaro Ando², Syudo Yamasaki³, Naohiro Okada^{2

4}, Atsushi Nishida³, Kiyoto Kasai^{1

2

4

5}, Saori Tanaka⁶, Hironori Nakatani⁷, Shinsuke Koike^{1

4

5

8}

Affiliations

¹ The Center for Integrative Science of Human Behavior (CiSHuB), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
² Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
³ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴ International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN), Tokyo, Japan.
⁵ University of Tokyo Institute for Diversity & Adaptation of Human Mind (UTIDAHM), Tokyo, Japan.
⁶ Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group, Kyoto, Japan.
⁷ Department of Information Media Technology, Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan.
⁸ Center for Evolutionary Cognitive Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.

PMID: 33847349
DOI: 10.1093/jn/nxab068

Abstract

Background: There is an alarming increase in the obesity prevalence among children in an environment of increasing availability of preprocessed high-calorie foods. However, some people maintain a healthy weight even in such obesogenic environments. This difference in body weight management could be attributed to individual differences in dietary restraint; however, its underlying neurocognitive mechanisms in adolescents remain unclear.

Objectives: This study aimed to elucidate these neurocognitive mechanisms in adolescents by examining the relationships between dietary restraint and the food-related value-coding region located in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).

Methods: The association between dietary restraint and BMI was tested using a multilinear regression analysis in a large early adolescent cohort (n = 2554; age, 12.2 ± 0.3 years; BMI, 17.9 ± 2.5 kg/m2; 1354 boys). Further, an fMRI experiment was designed to assess the association between the vmPFC response to food images and dietary restraint in 30 adolescents (age, 17.6 ± 1.9 years; BMI, 20.7 ± 2.2 kg/m2; 13 boys). Additionally, using 54 individuals from the cohort (age, 14.5 ± 0.6 years; BMI, 18.8 ± 2.6 kg/m2; 31 boys), we assessed the association between dietary restraint and intrinsic vmPFC-related functional connectivity.

Results: In the cohort, adolescents with increased dietary restraint showed a lower BMI (β = -0.38; P < 0.001; B = -0.06; SE = 0.003). The fMRI results showed a decreased vmPFC response to high-calorie food were correlated with greater dietary restraint. Moreover, there was an association of attenuated intrinsic vmPFC-related functional connectivity in the superior and middle frontal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus with greater dietary restraint.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that dietary restraint in adolescents could be a preventive factor for weight gain; its effect involves modulating the vmPFC, which is associated with food value coding.

Keywords: childhood obesity; medial prefrontal cortex; neuroimaging; self-regulation; weight change.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Body Mass Index
Body Weight
Body Weight Maintenance*
Child
Diet
Food
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Weight Loss*
Young Adult