According to research from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can affect food choices, weight gain, and even brain microstructure.
UCLA research shows importance of making more healthy foods available to people in disadvantaged areas
The study, which appears in Communications Medicine , a Nature journal, finds that poor quality of available foods, increased calorie intake from foods rich in trans fatty acids, and environments that do not encourage physical activity all They are common in disadvantaged neighborhoods, altering the flexibility of information processing in the brain that is involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition.
Previous research showed that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can affect brain health, but in this study, researchers did a detailed analysis of the cerebral cortex to determine how living in a disadvantaged area can change specific areas of the brain that perform different functions.
“We found that neighborhood disadvantage was associated with differences in the fine structure of the cerebral cortex. Some of these differences were related to higher body mass index and correlated with high intake of trans fatty acids found in fried fast food,” said Arpana Gupta, PhD, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Center and director of the Center. of Neuroimaging.
"Our results suggest that brain regions involved in reward, emotion, and the acquisition of knowledge and understanding could be affected by aspects of neighborhood disadvantage that contribute to obesity," said lead author Gupta. "This highlights the importance of addressing diet quality issues in disadvantaged neighborhoods to protect brain health."
Neighborhood disadvantage is defined by a combination of factors such as low median income, low educational attainment, overcrowding, and lack of complete plumbing. This study included 92 participants (27 men and 65 women) from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Demographic and body mass index information was collected, and neighborhood disadvantage in terms of area deprivation index (ADI) was assessed using the University of Wisconsin Medical School’s Public Health Neighborhood Atlas.
Previous studies have found that people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods have a higher risk of obesity due to the poor quality of foods available, increased calorie intake from foods rich in trans fatty acids, and environments that do not encourage physical activity.
In this study, the researchers focused on the relationship between the area deprivation index (ADI) and neuroimaging results at four levels of the cerebral cortex to further investigate the connections between neighborhood disadvantage and neighborhood structure. brain. Participants underwent two types of MRI scans that, when analyzed in combination, provide information about brain structure, signaling, and function.
"There are different populations of cells in different layers of the cortex, where there are different signaling mechanisms and information processing functions," said Lisa Kilpatrick, PhD, a researcher at the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center who researches brain signatures related to dysregulation of the brain-body relationship , the first author of the study. "Examining microstructure at different cortical levels provides a better understanding of alterations in cell populations, processes and communication pathways that may be affected by living in a disadvantaged neighborhood."
According to the results, worse ADI scores were associated with changes in communication in brain regions that are important for social interaction . Other changes occurred in regions involved in reward, emotion regulation, and higher cognitive processes , and these changes appeared to be affected by trans fatty acid intake. Taken together, the findings suggest that factors prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods that promote poor diet and unhealthy weight gain "alter the flexibility of information processing involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition."
Conclusions
Obesogenic aspects of neighborhood social disadvantage, including poor diet quality, may alter the flexibility of information processing in regions involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition. These data further suggest ramifications of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood on brain health.
Summary and final message Neighborhood disadvantages (a combination of low average income, more people dropping out of school early, overcrowding, lack of complete plumbing, etc.) are known to affect people’s brain health. We assessed whether neighborhood disadvantage was associated with differences in people’s brain structure, and whether any differences were related to excessively high weight and high intake of trans fatty acids, a component of fried fast food, in brain structure. of people’s brains. According to our results, brain regions involved in reward, emotion, and the acquisition of knowledge and understanding could be affected by aspects of neighborhood disadvantage that contribute to obesity, such as poor diet quality. |
Authors Gupta and Kilpatrick are both corresponding authors. Other authors, all from UCLA, include Keying Zhang, Tien Dong, Gilbert Gee, Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, May Wang, Jennifer Labus, Bruce Naliboff and Emeran Mayer.
Funding This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, including R01 MD015904 (AG), K23 DK106528 (AG), R03 DK121025 (AG), T32 DK07180 (TD), ULTR001881/DK041301 (UCLA CURE/CTSI Pilot and Feasibility Study (AG), R01 DK048351 (EAM), P30 DK041301, and pilot funding provided for brain scanning by the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. These funders had no role in the study design or collection, analysis, and the interpretation of the data.
