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  • Original Article
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Sleep restriction increases the neuronal response to unhealthy food in normal-weight individuals

Abstract

Context:

Sleep restriction alters responses to food. However, the underlying neural mechanisms for this effect are not well understood.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a neural system that is preferentially activated in response to unhealthy compared with healthy foods.

Participants:

Twenty-five normal-weight individuals, who normally slept 7–9 h per night, completed both phases of this randomized controlled study.

Intervention:

Each participant was tested after a period of five nights of either 4 or 9 h in bed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed in the fasted state, presenting healthy and unhealthy food stimuli and objects in a block design. Neuronal responses to unhealthy, relative to healthy food stimuli after each sleep period were assessed and compared.

Results:

After a period of restricted sleep, viewing unhealthy foods led to greater activation in the superior and middle temporal gyri, middle and superior frontal gyri, left inferior parietal lobule, orbitofrontal cortex, and right insula compared with healthy foods. These same stimuli presented after a period of habitual sleep did not produce marked activity patterns specific to unhealthy foods. Further, food intake during restricted sleep increased in association with a relative decrease in brain oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) activity observed in the right insula.

Conclusion:

This inverse relationship between insula activity and food intake and enhanced activation in brain reward and food-sensitive centers in response to unhealthy foods provides a model of neuronal mechanisms relating short sleep duration to obesity.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health grant #1R01HL091352-01A1 and 1 UL1 RR024156 from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of NCRR or NIH. Information on NCRR is available at the NCRR Website. Information on Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise can be obtained from NIH Roadmap website. The Almond Board of California provided almonds and Cabot Cheese provided cheese for the study. Trial registration on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, #NCT00935402.

Author contributions

MPSO, JH and MS designed research; MPSO, SW and MS conducted research; MPSO and MS obtained data; SW, MS, AS and MPSO analyzed data; SW, MS, JH and MPSO interpreted data; MPSO, SW and JH wrote the paper and also shared primary responsibility for its final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Special thanks to our participants as well as Andrew McReynolds, Zalak Trivedi and Amy Roberts for their work collecting data.

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Correspondence to M-P St-Onge.

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Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on International Journal of Obesity website

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St-Onge, MP., Wolfe, S., Sy, M. et al. Sleep restriction increases the neuronal response to unhealthy food in normal-weight individuals. Int J Obes 38, 411–416 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2013.114

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