Biological psychology
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Biological psychology · Jul 2015
Spontaneous regional brain activity links restrained eating to later weight gain among young women.
Theory and prospective studies have linked restrained eating (RE) to risk for future weight gain and the onset of obesity, but little is known about resting state neural activity that may underlie this association. To address this gap, resting fMRI was used to test the extent to which spontaneous neural activity in regions associated with inhibitory control and food reward account for potential relations between baseline RE levels and changes in body weight among dieters over a one-year interval. Spontaneous regional activity patterns corresponding to RE were assessed among 50 young women using regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis, which measured temporal synchronization of spontaneous fluctuations within a food deprivation condition. ⋯ Furthermore, food-deprived dieting women with high dietary restraint scores exhibited more spontaneous local activity in brain regions associated with the expectation and valuation for food reward [i.e., orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)] and reduced spontaneous local activity in inhibitory control regions [i.e., bilateral dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)] at baseline. Notably, the association between baseline RE and follow-up weight gain was mediated by decreased local synchronization of the right DLPFC in particular and, to a lesser degree, increased local synchronization of the right VMPFC. In conjunction with previous research, these findings highlight possible neural mechanisms underlying the relation between RE and risk for weight gain.
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Biological psychology · Jul 2015
The influence of early life sexual abuse on oxytocin concentrations and premenstrual symptomatology in women with a menstrually related mood disorder.
Oxytocin (OT), associated with affiliation and social bonding, social salience, and stress/pain regulation, may play a role in the pathophysiology of stress-related disorders, including menstrually-related mood disorders (MRMD's). Adverse impacts of early life sexual abuse (ESA) on adult attachment, affective regulation, and pain sensitivity suggest ESA-related OT dysregulation in MRMD pathophysiology. We investigated the influence of ESA on plasma OT, and the relationship of OT to the clinical phenomenology of MRMD's. ⋯ In women with ESA, OT was significantly, inversely correlated with premenstrual psychological and somatic symptoms (r's=-0.45 to -0.64, p's<0.05). The relationship between OT and premenstrual symptomatology was uniformly low and non-significant in women without ESA. In women with ESA, OT may positively modulate MRMD symptomatology.