Does obesity decrease brain functions?

Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata

“Is eating healthy food enough to maintain proper body weight?”, “Is obesity genetic?” “why is obesity a problem?”, these are a few questions most of us search on the internet every day, sometimes due to the fear of the diseases which follows obesity while other times due to maintaining physical beauty and matching up with the society; but have any of us ever thought if the brain-cells directly inherited from our parents can be an advantage or a disadvantage in this field? Well yes.

Recent researches have shown that obesity is directly related to certain parts of the brain and family history is something we should be concerned about while discussing the diseases related to the excess/less adipose tissue in our body. The hypothalamus, thalamus, subthalamus, midbrain, hippocampus, pallidum, pons, cortex, and medulla show direct relation with the inheritability of the body mass index (BMI). Thus the parts of the brain related to sensory stimulus, memory, and learning are also directly related to the distribution of body fat in our body as proved by certain genome-wide association studies (GWAS).   

Source: Pascal N Timshel, Jonatan J Thompson, Tune H Pers. Genetic mapping of etiologic brain cell types for obesity. eLife, 2020; 9 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.55851

Also read: Elevated adipose expression of IL-2 modulates obesity-linked metabolic inflammation and insulin resistance