Obese children can have structural difference in brain: study

Obesity has a ton of negative effects on a person’s negative health. It begins right at childhood. Obese and overweight children are prone to some serious health issues. However, that’s not all, their brain structure is also found to be different, in specific in regions that liked to cognitive control, when compared to normal weight. But, researchers have also stated that it is difficult to say these changes are caused by obesity or if these children are obese because their brain structures are different. This was stated in a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
Older studies on the subject have found a link between being overweight with scoring lower on various measures of executive function, an umbrella term for several functions such as self-control, decision making, working memory (temporarily holding information for processing) and response to rewards. This was examined by researchers by analyzing data from 2,700 children between the ages of 9-11 years who had been recruited as part of the National Institutes of Health Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (NIH ABCD) Study.
They observed the thickness of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain - our so-called ‘grey matter’ - and compared it to each child’s body mass index (BMI) and also analysed results from tests of executive function.
“We saw very clear differences in brain structure between children who were obese and children who were a healthy weight,” said study’s first author Dr Lisa Ronan from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. “It’s important to stress that the data does not show changes over time, so we cannot say whether being obese has changed the structure of these children’s brain or whether innate differences in their brains lead them to become obese,” Dr Ronan added.
“The links that we observed suggest that there are very real structural brain and cognitive differences in children who are obese. The findings contribute a small part towards our growing understanding of the causes and consequences of obesity in children,” added Professor Paul Fletcher, also at Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry.

The research will now continue to follow these children till they are older to see the structural differences in the brain change over time and exactly how they relate to obesity.