Food Addiction, Skating on Thin Ice: a Critical Overview of Neuroimaging Findings

Purpose of Review The food addiction model suggests the compelling hypothesis that compulsive overeating and drug addictions share common neurobiological underpinnings. However, neuroimaging results are inconsistent, and they are difficult to integrate with each other. This mini-review provides a critical overview of the human neuroimaging literature in food addiction and binge eating symptoms. Recent Findings Neuroanatomical studies suggest the involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in food addiction. Functional imaging studies have examined whether food addiction is associated with alterations during reward processing, cognitive control, or emotion regulation. However, these results have provided limited consistency so far. Summary To overcome the limitations of current research, we suggest that future studies on food addiction should address four main points: (a) disentangle between the effects of food addiction and obesity; (b) discriminate between causes and consequences of food addiction; (c) address the heterogeneity of food addiction; (d) prevent overinterpretation of results and facilitate replicability.