ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2015
Is it Worth the Effort? Novel Insights into Obesity-Associated Alterations in Cost-Benefit Decision-Making.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Network-Level Convergence of Adiposity-Related Gray Matter Alterations: A Coordinate-Based Connectome Mapping Meta-Analysis With Imaging Transcriptomics.Human brain mapping · 2026Pooled it
- Gray matter volume alterations in subjects with overweight and obesity: Evidence from a voxel-based meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Obesity is associated with reduced orbitofrontal cortex volume: A coordinate-based meta-analysis.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2020Pooled it
- Neuroanatomical differences in obesity: meta-analytic findings and their validation in an independent dataset.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2019Pooled it
- A nutritional blend of taurine, vitamins B6, B9, and B12 improves motivated behaviors in healthy adults-a double-blinded randomized clinical trial.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Trial
- Article
- A Neuroeconomics Approach to Obesity.Biological psychiatry · 2022Review
- Obesity - A Matter of Motivation?Experimental and clinical endocrinology & diabetes : official journal, German Society of Endocrinology [and] German Diabetes Association · 2022Review
- Structural Brain Changes Associated with Overweight and Obesity.Journal of obesity · 2021Review
- Article
- Expression of dopamine signaling genes in the post-mortem brain of individuals with mental illnesses is moderated by body mass index and mediated by insulin signaling genes.Journal of psychiatric research · 2018Article
- Associations between Obesity and Spinal Diseases: A Medical Expenditure Panel Study Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2017Article
- Cardiac Concomitants of Feedback and Prediction Error Processing in Reinforcement Learning.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2017Article
- Studies using pharmacological blockade of muscle afferents provide new insights into the neurophysiology of perceived exertion.The Journal of physiology · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cost-benefit decision-making entails the process of evaluating potential actions according to the trade-off between the expected reward (benefit) and the anticipated effort (costs). Recent research revealed that dopaminergic transmission within the fronto-striatal circuitry strongly modulates cost-benefit decision-making. Alterations within the dopaminergic fronto-striatal system have been associated with obesity, but little is known about cost-benefit decision-making differences in obese compared with lean individuals. With a newly developed experimental task we investigate obesity-associated alterations in cost-benefit decision-making, utilizing physical effort by handgrip-force exertion and both food and non-food rewards. We relate our behavioral findings to alterations in local gray matter volume assessed by structural MRI. Obese compared with lean subjects were less willing to engage in physical effort in particular for high-caloric sweet snack food. Further, self-reported body dissatisfaction negatively correlated with the willingness to invest effort for sweet snacks in obese men. On a structural level, obesity was associated with reductions in gray matter volume in bilateral prefrontal cortex. Nucleus accumbens volume positively correlated with task induced implicit food craving. Our results challenge the common notion that obese individuals are willing to work harder to obtain high-caloric food and emphasize the need for further exploration of the underlying neural mechanisms regarding cost-benefit decision-making differences in obesity.
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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.