ReviewPhysiology & behavior2016
Fuel not fun: Reinterpreting attenuated brain responses to reward in obesity.
Review in Physiology & behavior, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05026411 (Assessment of Food Reward Circuit Change in Individuals Receiving Orthodontic Treatment With Diffusion Tensor Imaging), which is not on this map. Cited by 37 papers.
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.
Assessment of Food Reward Circuit Change in Individuals Receiving Orthodontic Treatment With Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Appetite Perception and Cerebral Blood Flow in Aging Adults Following a Single Bout of Exercise.Nutrients · 2026Trial
- Bupropion increases activation in nucleus accumbens during anticipation of monetary reward.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Weight gain and brain development in the ABCD study cohort: A decade of insight and the road ahead.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Blunted anticipation, but not consummation, of food rewards in depression.Cell reports. Medicine · 2026Article
- A larger amount of palatable food is needed to provide stress relief during Western diet-induced obesity.Physiology & behavior · 2026Article
- Motivation and reward processing across sex/gender and the menstrual cycle: a biopsychosocial perspective.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Metabolism and the Mind: Investigating the Link Between Glucose Control and Reinforcement Learning in Humans.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- An interoceptive model of energy allostasis linking metabolic and mental health.Science advances · 2025Review
- A short-term, high-caloric diet has prolonged effects on brain insulin action in men.Nature metabolism · 2025Article
- Relating neighborhood deprivation to childhood obesity in the ABCD study: Evidence for theories of neuroinflammation and neuronal stress.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2023Article
- Western diet-induced obesity interferes with the HPA axis-blunting effects of palatable food in male rats.Physiology & behavior · 2023Article
- Reliability of gamified reinforcement learning in densely sampled longitudinal assessments.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Food memory circuits regulate eating and energy balance.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- Multimodal brain predictors of current weight and weight gain in children enrolled in the ABCD study ®.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2021Article
- Pairing Binge Drinking and a High-Fat Diet in Adolescence Modulates the Inflammatory Effects of Subsequent Alcohol Consumption in Mice.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Article
- Factors Related to Weight Loss Maintenance in the Medium-Long Term after Bariatric Surgery: A Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Review
- Fat and Carbohydrate Interact to Potentiate Food Reward in Healthy Weight but Not in Overweight or Obesity.Nutrients · 2021Observational
- Food Preferences and Obesity.Endocrinology and metabolism (Seoul, Korea) · 2021Article
- A Novel Precision Approach to Overcome the "Addiction Pandemic" by Incorporating Genetic Addiction Risk Severity (GARS) and Dopamine Homeostasis Restoration.Journal of personalized medicine · 2021Review
- Confection Confusion: Interplay Between Diet, Taste, and Nutrition.Trends in endocrinology and metabolism: TEM · 2021Review
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 at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
There is a well-established literature linking obesity to altered dopamine signaling and brain response to food-related stimuli. Neuroimaging studies frequently report enhanced responses in dopaminergic regions during food anticipation and decreased responses during reward receipt. This has been interpreted as reflecting anticipatory "reward surfeit", and consummatory "reward deficiency". In particular, attenuated response in the dorsal striatum to primary food rewards is proposed to reflect anhedonia, which leads to overeating in an attempt to compensate for the reward deficit. In this paper, we propose an alternative view. We consider brain response to food-related stimuli in a reinforcement-learning framework, which can be employed to separate the contributions of reward sensitivity and reward-related learning that are typically entangled in the brain response to reward. Consequently, we posit that decreased striatal responses to milkshake receipt reflect reduced reward-related learning rather than reward deficiency or anhedonia because reduced reward sensitivity would translate uniformly into reduced anticipatory and consummatory responses to reward. By re-conceptualizing reward deficiency as a shift in learning about subjective value of rewards, we attempt to reconcile neuroimaging findings with the putative role of dopamine in effort, energy expenditure and exploration and suggest that attenuated brain responses to energy dense foods reflect the "fuel", not the fun entailed by the reward.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.