Our research uses neuroimaging to investigate the brain's reward circuitry and its response to food stimuli with the aim of better understanding human eating behavior and susceptibility to obesity. We found that the dopamine binding potential in the dorsolateral striatum is positively related to opportunistic eating behavior and obesity. Some researchers have speculated that dopamine binding is nonlinearly related to adiposity and we are now planning future studies to clarify the role of dopmanine signaling in obesity.
| Simmons, W Kyle; Rapuano, Kristina M; Ingeholm, John E et al. (2014) The ventral pallidum and orbitofrontal cortex support food pleasantness inferences. Brain Struct Funct 219:473-83 |
| Guo, J; Simmons, W K; Herscovitch, P et al. (2014) Striatal dopamine D2-like receptor correlation patterns with human obesity and opportunistic eating behavior. Mol Psychiatry 19:1078-84 |
| Hall, Kevin D; Hammond, Ross A; Rahmandad, Hazhir (2014) Dynamic interplay among homeostatic, hedonic, and cognitive feedback circuits regulating body weight. Am J Public Health 104:1169-75 |
| Simmons, W Kyle; Rapuano, Kristina M; Kallman, Seth J et al. (2013) Category-specific integration of homeostatic signals in caudal but not rostral human insula. Nat Neurosci 16:1551-2 |
