The Outward Spiral: A vicious cycle model of obesity and cognitive dysfunction.

•The hippocampus is a substrate for the contextual stimulus control of behavior.•Satiety signals are contextual cues that underlie the inhibitory control of eating.•The Western diet (WD) is associated with hippocampal pathology and dysfunction.•Both hippocampal damage and WD impair discriminative control by satiety cues.•WD may induce a vicious cycle of overeating and hippocampal-based memory decline.