ABSTRACT
An improved understanding of neural vulnerability factors that predict overeating and subsequent weight gain has the potential to improve treatment. This chapter reviews the primary theories relating aberrations in responsivity of brain reward and incentive valuation regions, as well as regions that affect activation in these regions (e.g., inhibitory regions), to overeating, as well as evidence that is consistent or inconsistent with these theories, focusing primarily on prospective and experimental data. It concludes by translating these findings into implications for the more effective management of overeating. Individuals who show greater reward region responsivity to food intake, which is presumably an inborn characteristic, are theoretically at elevated risk for overeating and consequent weight gain. The reward deficit model of obesity posits that individuals with lower sensitivity of dopamine-based reward regions overeat to compensate for this reward deficiency.
