A new study has revealed that people who have eating behaviours that border on addictions appear to have the similar activity in their brains to substance abusers. This neutral activity includes heightened responses, so they have much more powerful cravings than normal.
The full study was posted online, and will also appear in print in an edition of ‘Archives of General Psychiatry’. The researchers used FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to compare the responses of 48 young and healthy women to the signalling of the impending arrival of a Chocolate Milkshake and a tasteless solution.
The women had a vast range of weight, from obese to slender, and were recruited for a trial of weight maintenance. Their eating behaviours were assessed using a scale of food addiction that was developed by a Yale student, Ashley Gearhardt, who is also the lead author of the study.
He noted that the similar patterns in the neural activity lead to addictive like eating behaviours and also substance abuse and dependency. Both drugs and food result in the release of dopamine in the mesolimbic areas of the brain, and the amount released coincided with the reward they get from the food or the drugs.
Gearhardt and his colleagues also discovered that those participants who score the highest in the food addiction test also showed more activity in the area of the brain which is linked with craving. This led them to the conclusion that food compulsions can be classes as addictions, and there really is such a thing as an addictive personality. Whether it be drugs or food, their brain is telling them that it will bring great rewards, and there is little they can do about it.
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