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From CNN?..

We all know that what you eat can change your physical appearance. It also alters how your body functions, making it more or less difficult to pump blood, grow healthy bones or process insulin.

New research presented this week at the Neuroscience 2012 conference suggests that what you eat can even alter your brain ? and vice versa.

Timothy Verstynen and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the brain activity in 29 adults. The study participants were shown words on a screen in various colors and asked to identify the color, not the word. Sometimes it was easy ? the word red printed in red; other times it was harder, like seeing the word red printed in blue.

The overweight and obese participants? brains showed more activity during difficult questions, suggesting they were working harder to get the same answers.
Verstynen said the results imply that obese people are less efficient at making complex decisions, which could be important for controlling impulse behavior.

His team theorizes that unhealthy eating choices can lead to disrupted brain connections that lead to weakened brain performance, which can lead to making more unhealthy choices.

In other words, it?s a vicious cycle.

A second study, presented by Dr. Tony Goldstone, showed the brain?s orbitfrontal cortex may play a big role in how people make food choices. This area encodes the ?value? of a food, Goldstone said ? i.e. how rewarding or pleasurable it will be to eat.

Study participants were asked to fast overnight. In the morning they were given a breakfast of about 700 calories and shown photos of food while hooked up to an MRI machine. They were asked to fast again before another visit; the following morning they were not given breakfast and then shown the same photos.

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Source: http://www.lensaunders.com/wp/?p=5678

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