ArticleAppetite2018
Is brain response to food rewards related to overeating? A test of the reward surfeit model of overeating in children.
Article in Appetite, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 3 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
39 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- The association between obesity severity and food reward in adolescents with obesity: a one-stage individual participant data meta-analysis.European journal of nutrition · 2024Pooled it
- Loss of Control over Eating, Inhibitory Control, and Reward Sensitivity in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2023Pooled it
- Factors Associated with Eating in the Absence of Hunger among Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2022Pooled it
- Improving Cardiometabolic Health in Adolescent Girls With Elevated Anxiety: Web-Based Multisite, Pilot, and Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR cardio · 2026Trial
- Weight gain and brain development in the ABCD study cohort: A decade of insight and the road ahead.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Altered hypothalamic functional connectivity in adolescents with severe obesity.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Observational
- Restriction spectrum imaging reveals brain microstructural correlates of obesity risk in early childhood.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Altered Hypothalamic functional connectivity in adolescents with severe obesity.Research square · 2026Article
- Structural and Functional Brain Changes in Children and Adolescents With Obesity.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Review
- "Eating isn't just about paying attention-It's about the self-regulation of sensory attention while eating!": Exploring mindful eating by examining sensory attention and non-judgmental awareness in the context of eating cessation.Nutrition and health · 2025Article
- Smaller Subcortical Volume in Reward Processing Regions Precedes Weight Gain in Youth With High Financial Adversity: Findings From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Article
- Delay discounting and nucleus accumbens functional connectivity are related to weight status in adolescents from the ABCD study.Pediatric obesity · 2025Article
- Obesity-related alterations of intrinsic functional architecture: a resting-state fMRI study based on the human connectome project.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Reward and Inhibitory Control as Mechanisms and Treatment Targets for Binge Eating Disorder.Current psychiatry reports · 2024Review
- Cortical thickness and childhood eating behaviors: differences according to sex and age, and relevance for eating disorders.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2024Article
- Smaller subcortical volume relates to greater weight gain in girls with initially healthy weight.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2024Article
- Article
- Neural correlates of appetite in adolescents.Appetite · 2023Article
- 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
- Switching between foods: A potential behavioral phenotype of hedonic hunger and increased obesity risk in children.Physiology & behavior · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The reward surfeit model of overeating suggests that heightened brain response to rewards contributes to overeating and subsequent weight gain. However, previous studies have not tested whether brain response to reward is associated with food intake, particularly during childhood, a period of dynamic development in reward and inhibitory control neurocircuitry. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with 7-11-year-old children (n = 59; healthy weight, n = 31; overweight, n = 28; 54% female) while they played a modified card-guessing paradigm to examine blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response to anticipating and winning rewards (food, money, neutral). Food intake was assessed at three separate meals that measured different facets of eating behavior: 1) typical consumption (baseline), 2) overindulgence (palatable buffet), and 3) eating in the absence of hunger (EAH). A priori regions of interest included regions implicated in both reward processing and inhibitory control. Multiple stepwise regressions were conducted to examine the relationship between intake and BOLD response to rewards. Corrected results showed that a greater BOLD response in the medial prefrontal cortex for anticipating food compared to money positively correlated with how much children ate at the baseline and palatable buffet meals. BOLD response in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for winning food compared to money was positively correlated with intake at the palatable buffet meal and EAH. All aforementioned relationships were independent of child weight status. Findings support the reward surfeit model by showing that increased brain response to food compared to money rewards positively correlates with laboratory measures of food intake in children.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.