Emotional eating: A treatment-worthy construct, or artifact of relations between mood and eating behaviors in younger and older women with obesity

Integrated multi-modal brain signatures predict sex-specific obesity status

Investigating sex as a biological variable is key to determine obesity manifestation and treatment response. Individual neuroimaging modalities have uncovered mechanisms related to obesity and altered ingestive behaviours. However, few, if any, studies have integrated data from multi-modal brain imaging to predict sex-specific brain signatures related to obesity. We used a data-driven approach to investigate how multi-modal MRI and clinical features predict a sex-specific signature of participants with high body mass index (overweight/obese) compared to non-obese body mass index in a sex-specific manner. A total of 78 high body mass index (55 female) and 105 non-obese body mass index (63 female) participants were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. All participants classified as high body mass index had a body mass index greater than 25 kg/m2 and non-obese body mass index had a body mass index between 19 and 20 kg/m2. Multi-modal neuroimaging (morphometry, functional resting-state MRI and diffusion-weighted scan), along with a battery of behavioural and clinical questionnaires were acquired, including measures of mood, early life adversity and altered ingestive behaviours. A Data Integration Analysis for Biomarker discovery using Latent Components was conducted to determine whether clinical features, brain morphometry, functional connectivity and anatomical connectivity could accurately differentiate participants stratified by obesity and sex. The derived models differentiated high body mass index against non-obese body mass index participants, and males with high body mass index against females with high body mass index obtaining balanced accuracies of 77 and 75%, respectively. Sex-specific differences within the cortico-basal-ganglia-thalamic-cortico loop, the choroid plexus-CSF system, salience, sensorimotor and default-mode networks were identified, and were associated with early life adversity, mental health quality and greater somatosensation. Results showed multi-modal brain signatures suggesting sex-specific cortical mechanisms underlying obesity, which fosters clinical implications for tailored obesity interventions based on sex.

The Association of Emotional Eating with Overweight/Obesity, Depression, Anxiety/Stress, and Dietary Patterns: A Review of the Current Clinical Evidence

(1) Background: Emotional eating is considered as the propensity to eat in response to emotions. It is considered as a critical risk factor for recurrent weight gain. Such overeating is able to affect general health due to excess energy intake and mental health. So far, there is still considerable controversy on the effect of the emotional eating concept. The objective of this study is to summarize and evaluate the interconnections among emotional eating and overweight/obesity, depression, anxiety/stress, and dietary patterns; (2) Methods: This is a thorough review of the reported associations among emotional eating and overweight/obesity, depression, anxiety/stress, and dietary patterns. We compressively searched the most precise scientific online databases, e.g., PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar to obtain the most up-to-date data from clinical studies in humans from the last ten years (2013-2023) using critical and representative keywords. Several inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied for scrutinizing only longitudinal, cross-sectional, descriptive, and prospective clinical studies in Caucasian populations; (3) Results: The currently available findings suggest that overeating/obesity and unhealthy eating behaviors (e.g., fast food consumption) are associated with emotional eating. Moreover, the increase in depressive symptoms seems to be related with more emotional eating. Psychological distress is also related with a greater risk for emotional eating. However, the most common limitations are the small sample size and their lack of diversity. In addition, a cross-sectional study was performed in the majority of them; (4) Conclusions: Finding coping mechanisms for the negative emotions and nutrition education can prevent the prevalence of emotional eating. Future studies should further explain the underlying mechanisms of the interconnections among emotional eating and overweight/obesity, depression, anxiety/stress, and dietary patterns.