ArticlePediatric obesity2025
Delay discounting and nucleus accumbens functional connectivity are related to weight status in adolescents from the ABCD study.
Article in Pediatric obesity, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associations of Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI With Frontostriatal Connectivity in Young Children.Pediatric obesity · 2026Article
- Structural stressors, neurocognition in reward-related decision making and substance use risk in Puerto Rican early adolescents at two sites: study design.Frontiers in public health · 2026Observational
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundDespite the growing epidemic of paediatric obesity, questions remain regarding potential neural mechanisms for individual risk. Delay discounting is a cognitive process of comparison of valuation between immediate and delayed reward, which has been inconsistently linked to weight status. Moreover, central to the brain's reward system is the nucleus accumbens, a region structurally and functionally altered in obesity. OBJECTIVES/
methodsThis study aimed to examine the relationships between two continuous metrics of weight status, performance on a monetary delay-discounting task and nucleus accumbens functional connectivity in 10-12-year-olds from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.
resultsUsing multilevel longitudinal linear modelling, we found greater discounting was associated with higher BMI Z-scores (BMIz) and waist-to-height ratio Z-scores (WHtRz) (N = 3819). Moreover, we observed functional connectivity of the nucleus accumbens to the cingulo-opercular, dorsal attention, fronto-parietal, salience and ventral attention networks were predictive of BMIz (N = 1817). Nucleus accumbens functional connectivity was not found to mediate the association between delay-discounting behaviour and BMIz.
conclusionsDelay discounting and nucleus accumbens functional connectivity are independently related to weight status in a large sample of early adolescents. A better understanding of the relationship between reward and overeating behaviours may better inform obesity interventions.
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