ABSTRACT
Food addiction is a growing global health concern implicated in the epidemic of obesity and overweight. The epidemic of obesity was declared by the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Addiciton to food can cripple the health of the patient by hijacking healthy drives for food consumption. Neuroimaging modalities such as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (s/fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) have been used to demonstrate specific neurofunctional changes that are common to both drug abuse and overeating. The cardinal neuromodulator associated with reward, motivation and heavily implicated in normal feeding, as well as in both drug addiction and obesity, is the catecholamine dopamine. There are three dopaminergic pathways relevant to addiction: the mesolimbic/mesoaccumbens, nigrostriatal, and mesocortical pathways. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research has illuminated a range of similarities between drug and food abusers in terms of neurodysfunction.
