59 — Neurobehavioural Correlates of Obesity are Largely Heritable

This paper uses the Human Connectome Project dataset of brain-scans coupled with information such as individuals’ heights, weights, medical histories, and other variables to determine if there is a neurobehavioral aspect to obesity that can be explained by heritable traits.

Because so many genes with strong correlation to obesity are often expressed predominantly in the nervous system, it is unsurprising that a primary factor of predisposition for obesity might be neural. Vainik et al explore cortical-thickness, entorhinal-parahippocampal structure, and other morphometries and cross-correlate with occurrence of obesity. This study uses sibling/twin information (encoded in the HCP data) to determine which traits can be explained by heritability.

The study finds a statistically insignificant correlation between impulse-control (“Delay Discounting”), but finds a statistically significant relationship between frontal-lobe cortical thickness with obesity (thicker cortex on the left side means higher likelihood of obesity; thicker on the right has the opposite effect).

I’m hesitant to assign too much importance to these findings just yet without doing a deeper dive in neurobehavioral and obesity studies, but these findings are interesting because they suggest neural underpinnings of obesity (which is not surprising) and demonstrate that these traits are heritable (which is also not surprising) — both of which could change the way we diagnose, explore, and intervene with obesity in the clinic.

I’d write more, but I’m on my way to see Esperanza Spalding at the BSO so it’ll have to wait.