A recent research that studied the brain scan of some obese people reported that obese people might get addicted to food in the similar fashion as a drug addict to drugs.

Gene-Jack Wang and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York conducted this study. It was published in the October 17, 2006 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and online in PNAS Early Edition the week of October 2.

“This study opens new territory in understanding how the body and brain connect to each other, and how this connection is tied to obesity,” said lead author Gene-Jack Wang. “We were able to simulate the process that takes place when the stomach is full, and for the first time we could see the pathway from the stomach to the brain that turns ‘off’ the brain’s desire to continue eating.”

The study was conducted on 7 obese people who had gastric stimulators implanted for 1-2 years. This device gives a low-level electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve. The device in ‘on’ position stimulates the vagus nerve making the stomach expand and generate peptides that sends a message of “fullness” to the brain.

“We know that if we eat, our stomach sends a signal to the brain via the vagus nerve. The ingredients of food touch the wall of the stomach and the signal goes through to the brain to say ‘eat more’ or ‘eat less’,” explained Wang. “But we wanted to know which area of the brain the signal goes to,” he said.