Inflammation shows signs of brain damage in obese adolescents

Researchers using MRI reveals brain damage in obese teens.

 There is a positive correlation between brain changes and hormones such as leptin and insulin.

According to a study being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, Researchers using MRI have found signs of damage that may be related to inflammation in the brains of obese adolescents.

Obesity in young people has become a significant public health problem. In the US, the percentage of children and adolescents affected by obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data from the World Health Organization indicates that the number of overweight or obese infants and young children ages five years or younger increased from 32 million globally in 1990 to 41 million in 2016.

While obesity is primarily associated with weight gain, recent evidence suggests that the disease triggers inflammation in the nervous system that could damage important regions of the brain. Developments in MRI like diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a technique that tracks the diffusion of water along the brain's signal-carrying white matter tracts, have enabled researchers to study this damage directly.

For the new study, researchers compared DTI results in 59 obese adolescence. Scientists present students and 61 healthy adolescents, ages 12 to 16 years. From DTI, the researchers derived a measure called fractional anisotropy (FA), which correlates with the condition of the brain's white matter. A reduction in FA is indicative of increasing damage in the white matter.

The results showed a reduction of FA values in the obese adolescents in regions located in the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibres that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Decrease of FA was also found in the middle orbit ofrontal gyrus, a brain region related to emotional control and the reward circuit. None of the brain regions in obese patients had increased FA.

"Brain changes found in obese adolescents related to important regions responsible for the control of appetite, emotions and cognitive functions," said study co-author .

This pattern of damage correlated with some inflammatory markers like leptin, a hormone made by fat cells that helps regulate energy levels and fat stores. In some obese people, the brain does not respond to leptin, causing them to keep eating despite adequate or excessive fat stores. This condition, known as leptin resistance, makes the fat cells produce even more leptin.

The worsening condition of the white matter was also associated with levels of insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas that helps regulate blood sugar levels. Obese people often suffer from insulin resistance, a state in which the body is resistant to the effects of the hormone.

"Our maps showed a positive correlation between brain changes and hormones such as leptin and insulin," the Dr. said. "Furthermore, we found a positive association with inflammatory markers, which leads us to believe in a process of neuroinflammation besides insulin and leptin resistance."

Dr.  noted that additional studies are needed to determine if this inflammation in young people with obesity is a consequence of the structural changes in the brain.

"In the future, we would like to repeat brain MRI in these adolescents after multi-professional treatment for weight loss to assess if the brain changes are reversible or not," she added.

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Advanced MRI brain scan can predict stroke-related dementia

Advancement of technology has made it easier for practitioner to diagnose diseases which were earlier tough to predict and at times went undetected.

A study has found that an advanced MRI brain scan analysis in patients with stroke-related, small vessel disease, helped predict problems with thinking, memory and even dementia.

When a stroke or other disease damages tiny blood vessels in the brain, the condition is known as small vessel disease. This condition is the most common cause of thinking problems ( planning,  organising information and processing speed) and can even lead to dementia. Although early treatment could help patients at risk, no effective test is available to identify them.

This study evaluated the accuracy of a new MRI analysis technique using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) , in predicting thinking problems and dementia related to small vessel disease.

A single scan measured the brain in fine detail to reveal damaged areas. By comparing these images to a healthy person's, researchers were able to classify the brain into areas of healthy versus damaged tissue.

Results showed that participants with the most brain damage were much more likely to develop thinking problems. The analysis also helped predict 3/4ths of the dementia cases that occurred during the study.

We've developed a useful tool for monitoring patients at risk of developing dementia and could target those who need early treatment, said senior author of the study.


The study included 99 patients with small vessel disease caused by ischemic stroke, a type of stroke that blocks the blood vessels deep within the brain. Slightly more than 1/3rd were female, average age 68, and most were Caucasian.

Patients received the MRI scans annually for 3 years and thinking tests annually for 5 years. 18 participants developed dementia during the study, with an average time to onset of approximately 3 years and 4 months.

This advanced MRI analysis offers a highly accurate and sensitive marker of small vessel diseases severity in a single measure that can be used to detect who will and will not go on to develop dementia in a 5 year period , noted the author.

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New brain imaging technique can help improve diagnoses of Parkinson's disease

A new study suggests that a promising brain-imaging technique has the potential to improve diagnosis for the millions of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Utilizing the diffusion tensor imaging technique, as it is known, could allow clinicians to assess people earlier, leading to improved treatment interventions and therapies for patients.

The three-year study by the University of Florida looked at 72 patients, each with a clinically defined movement disorder diagnosis. Using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, the researchers successfully separated the patients into disorder groups with a high degree of accuracy.

"The purpose of this study is to identify markers in the brain that differentiate movement disorders which have clinical symptoms that overlap, making [the disorders] difficult to distinguish,” David Vaillancourt, associate professor in the department of applied physiology and kinesiology and the study’s principal investigator, said.

"No other imaging, cerebrospinal fluid or blood marker has been this successful at differentiating these disorders. The results are very promising,” he said.



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White matter 'to be blamed for trouble in decision making with age'

 People's ability to make decisions in novel situations decreases with age and is associated with a reduction in the integrity of two specific white-matter pathways that connect an area in the cerebral cortex, called the medial prefrontal cortex, with two other areas deeper in the brain, a new study has revealed.

Grey matter is the part of the brain that contains the bodies of the neurons while white matter contains the cable-like axons that carry signals from one part of the brain to another.

In the past, most brain-imaging research has concentrated on the grey matter. Recently, however, neuroscientists have begun looking more closely at white matter.

It has been linked to the brain's processing speed and attention span, among other things, but this is the first study to link white matter to learning and decision making.

"The evidence that this decline in decision-making is associated with white-matter integrity suggests that there may be effective ways to intervene," Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin, first author of the study from Vanderbilt's psychology department and Institute of Imaging Science, said.

"Several studies have shown that white-matter connections can be strengthened by specific forms of cognitive training," he said.

The critical white-matter connections that the experiment identified run from the thalamus, a highly connected relay centre in the brain, to the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved with decision making, and from the medial prefrontal cortex to the ventral striatum, which is associated with the emotional and motivational aspects of behaviour.

The study involved 25 adults ranging from 21 to 85 years of age. They were asked to perform a monetary learning task. The task was designed to elicit what psychologists call probabilistic reward learning.

"This is a common type of decision making that we use every day.
"Whenever we try to choose the best alternative based on previous experience and are uncertain of the outcome, we are relying on probabilistic reward learning," Samanez-Larkin said.
On the same day, the participant's brains were scanned using a relatively new MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).

In the last 20 years, most brain imaging research has been done with fMRI, an imaging method that measures variations in the oxygen consumption in different areas of the grey matter, which correspond to variations in neuron activity levels.

By contrast, DTI detects the water trapped by the myelin sheaths that surround the axons in white-matter regions and produces a signal related to the density, diameter and amount of myelination of the axons (a combination the researchers call 'integrity').
"The protocols for DTI have improved substantially.

"In future studies we'd really like to combine MRI and DTI to better characterize age differences in these neural circuits and examine how training might improve both structure and function," Samanez-Larkin added.