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A recent study sheds new light on the effects of junk food on the brain, providing new insights into the causes of obesity.
According to psypost.org, Mediafax reports that researchers found that a diet high in calories, sugar and fat altered brain function and affected food-seeking behavior, especially in mice prone to obesity. How the study was conducted The study, published in the journal Neuropharmacology, used mice that were selectively bred to be either prone to obesity or resistant to obesity. The animals were divided into three groups: one group was fed a standard chow, another was fed junk food, and the third was fed junk food and then fasted for a period of time.
The unhealthy diet, which consisted of a mixture of potato chips, crackers, Nestle beer, and peanut butter, mimicked a high-calorie, high-fat human diet. The researchers conducted behavioral experiments and electrophysiological studies to assess food-seeking motivation and brain changes in the mice.
Results showed that obesity-prone rats showed a heightened motivation to seek out food after a period of junk food deprivation. In contrast, obesity-resistant rats showed no significant changes in their foraging behavior. Brain studies revealed changes in neuronal transmission in the nucleus accumbens, a key region involved in the reward system, in obese rats. These changes were specific to the connections between the medial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens. The findings suggest that a history of junk food consumption and subsequent deprivation may lead to significant neural and behavioral changes, particularly in people prone to obesity.
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