It's a time of worry for many across the world, as the obesity epidemic reaches more and more people in the globe, which has caused scientists to turn their heads into studying the phenomenon to better understand its causes - now, the latest findings point that for those young people suffering from child obesity, the brain response varies.
Among the many steps that scientists are taking to find out more about this disease is that researchers have begun studying child obesity's brain responses, trying to find out whether the children who go through this at a young age have any sort of disposition to it.
According to Science Daily, the latest discovery regarding child obesity and brain response came in charge of a joint work between the University of California and San Diego Health Sciences, in a paper entitled "Increased brain response to appetitive tastes in the insula and amygdala in obese compared to healthy weight children when sated" and published on International Journal of Obesity.
While the ultimate concern has been trying to find a causal relationship between overeating and being hypersensitive to sugar, the findings regarding child obesity and brain responses were something different altogether: that these children who suffer from the condition so early in life may have a psychological o physiological disposition to sugar consumption.
According to Psych Central, the study suggests that those children that feel motivated by food as a reward (ultimately just getting a good feeling from consuming things) could potentially have brain circuitries that predispose them to this, as their brains light up differently to sugar during scans.
"The take-home message is that obese children, compared to healthy weight children, have enhanced responses in their brain to sugar," Kerri Boutelle, the author of the study, told Tech Times.
The child obesity brain study involved 23 children, all between the ages of eight and twelve, and their brains were scanned as they consumed sugar.
