Perspective food addiction, caloric restriction, and dopaminergic neurotransmission
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Perspective food addiction, caloric restriction, and dopaminergic neurotransmission. / Stankowska, Arwen Urrsula Malgorzata; Gjedde, Albert.
In: Acta Neuropsychiatrica (Print), Vol. 25, No. 5, 2013, p. 257-267.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Perspective food addiction, caloric restriction, and dopaminergic neurotransmission
AU - Stankowska, Arwen Urrsula Malgorzata
AU - Gjedde, Albert
N1 - CURIS 2013 NEXS 354
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - People attempt to change their lifestyle when obesity impairs their quality of life. The attempts often fail when multiple habits must be changed in unison. Here we explore relations among food addiction, the neurobiology of habits, and caloric restriction, when people seek to return to normal eating behaviour, with particular emphasis on the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission. Severely obese individuals have specific neurobiological characteristics in common with drug abusers, including low availability of dopamine receptors in the striatum, impaired neuronal responses to dopamine, and reduced activity in prefrontal regions of the cerebral cortex. The neurobiological characteristics suggest that obese people also have a pathological dependence in common with addicts, in the form of food addiction. Malnutrition and dieting both relate to binge eating, possibly as a compensation for a reduced cognitive reward condition. The combination of caloric restriction and food addiction imparts a high risk of relapse as a result of further reduction of dopaminergic neurotransmission and the subsequent loss of reward. As with drugs of abuse, ingestion of large quantities of sugar in circumstances of uncontrolled eating increases dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. This and other evidence suggests that abuse of food is a habit learned by means of mechanisms centred in the basal ganglia, with an increased risk of relapse in the presence of associative amplifiers. This risk is predicted by the relationship between dopamine receptor availability in the striatum and sensation-seeking in the form of an inverted U, suggested by recent findings, consistent with two opposite states of hypodopaminergic and hyperdopaminergic neuromodulation.
AB - People attempt to change their lifestyle when obesity impairs their quality of life. The attempts often fail when multiple habits must be changed in unison. Here we explore relations among food addiction, the neurobiology of habits, and caloric restriction, when people seek to return to normal eating behaviour, with particular emphasis on the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission. Severely obese individuals have specific neurobiological characteristics in common with drug abusers, including low availability of dopamine receptors in the striatum, impaired neuronal responses to dopamine, and reduced activity in prefrontal regions of the cerebral cortex. The neurobiological characteristics suggest that obese people also have a pathological dependence in common with addicts, in the form of food addiction. Malnutrition and dieting both relate to binge eating, possibly as a compensation for a reduced cognitive reward condition. The combination of caloric restriction and food addiction imparts a high risk of relapse as a result of further reduction of dopaminergic neurotransmission and the subsequent loss of reward. As with drugs of abuse, ingestion of large quantities of sugar in circumstances of uncontrolled eating increases dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. This and other evidence suggests that abuse of food is a habit learned by means of mechanisms centred in the basal ganglia, with an increased risk of relapse in the presence of associative amplifiers. This risk is predicted by the relationship between dopamine receptor availability in the striatum and sensation-seeking in the form of an inverted U, suggested by recent findings, consistent with two opposite states of hypodopaminergic and hyperdopaminergic neuromodulation.
KW - caloric restriction
KW - dopamine
KW - reinforcement
KW - reward
KW - substance-related disorders
U2 - 10.1017/neu.2013.18
DO - 10.1017/neu.2013.18
M3 - Review
VL - 25
SP - 257
EP - 267
JO - Acta Neuropsychiatrica
JF - Acta Neuropsychiatrica
SN - 0924-2708
IS - 5
ER -
ID: 119830693