ReviewAgeing research reviews2015
Does the brain shrink as the waist expands?
Review in Ageing research reviews, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 99 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
99 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Body mass index and regional brain N-acetylaspartate: a systematic review and meta-analysis of ¹H-MRS studies.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Pooled it
- Investigating the shared genetic architecture between schizophrenia and body mass index.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Neuroanatomical differences in obesity: meta-analytic findings and their validation in an independent dataset.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2019Pooled it
- Obesity and episodic memory function.The journal of physiological sciences : JPS · 2018Pooled it
- Neurobehavioral correlates of obesity are largely heritable.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Trial
- Associations of post-traumatic stress disorder and metabolic syndrome with accelerated brain aging in South African adults: A case-control study.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Effects of obesity on brain health and cognition.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2026Review
- Per-Capita Food Availability and Global Dementia Burden Across Multiple Exposure Windows.Nutrients · 2026Article
- High-Resolution Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging of Hippocampus Subfields Across the Healthy Lifespan.NMR in biomedicine · 2026Article
- Overweight/obesity and gait abnormality: what role does the brain play in the relationship?International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Article
- Aging and metabolism contribute separately to brain-body health.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Sex- and age-dependent associations between waist-to-hip ratio and cognitive impairment: a cross-sectional study of rural adults aged 40 years and older in northwestern China.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Article
- New perspective on acupuncture treatment for obesity: mechanisms in the brain based on multidimensional neural circuits.American journal of translational research · 2026Review
- Obesity and Insulin Resistance Alter Neural Processing of Unpleasant, but Not Pleasant, Visual Stimuli in Young Adults.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Letter to the Editor: "Dyslipidemia and cerebral atrophy among health check-up individuals: A cross-sectional study".International journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention · 2025Article
- Discovery of Personalized Treatment for Immuno-Metabolic Depression-Focus on 11beta Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase Type 2 (11betaHSD2) and Toll-like Receptor 4 (TLR4) Inhibition with Enoxolone.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Article
- Obesity and brain volumes: mediation by cardiometabolic and inflammatory measures.Stroke and vascular neurology · 2025Article
- Association of Diet and Waist-to-Hip Ratio With Brain Connectivity and Memory in Aging.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- The effect of weight loss on brain age in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
39 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that being overweight or obese is related to worse cognitive performance, particularly executive function. Obesity may also increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Consequently, there has been increasing interest in whether adiposity is related to gray or white matter (GM, WM) atrophy. In this review, we identified and critically evaluated studies assessing obesity and GM or WM volumes either globally or in specific regions of interest (ROIs). Across all ages, higher adiposity was consistently associated with frontal GM atrophy, particularly in prefrontal cortex. In children and adults <40 years of age, most studies found no relationship between adiposity and occipital or parietal GM volumes, whereas findings for temporal lobe were mixed. In middle-aged and aged adults, a majority of studies found that higher adiposity is associated with parietal and temporal GM atrophy, whereas results for precuneus, posterior cingulate, and hippocampus were mixed. Higher adiposity had no clear association with global or regional WM in any age group. We conclude that higher adiposity may be associated with frontal GM atrophy across all ages and parietal and temporal GM atrophy in middle and old age.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.