Dr. Jeremy Coplan and Colleagues Show Excess Weight Linked to Brain Changes that May Relate to Memory, Emotions, and Appetite
Feb 11, 2014
Brooklyn, NY – Jeremy D. Coplan, MD, professor of psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and researchers at SUNY Downstate and other institutions have shown that being overweight appears related to reduced levels of a molecule that reflects brain cell health in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory, learning, and emotions, and likely also involved in appetite control. The study was published in Neuroimage: Clinical.
Dr. Coplan led a multicenter team that visualized the molecule, N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA), using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) application. NAA is associated with brain cell health. Overweight study participants exhibited lower levels of NAA in the hippocampus than normal weight subjects. The effect was independent of age, sex, and psychiatric diagnoses.
The importance of the hippocampus – a seahorse-shaped organ deep within the brain – to the formation and preservation of memory and to emotional control is well known, Dr. Coplan notes, but its role in appetite control is less established.
“The relevance of the finding is that being overweight is associated with specific changes in a part of the brain that is crucial to memory formation and emotions, and probably to appetite,” said Dr. Coplan. The study is believed to be the first human research documenting the association of NAA with body weight.
“Whether low NAA is a consequence of being overweight, causes being overweight, or a combination of both remains to be determined,” Dr. Coplan added. "Future studies are planned to focus on whether weight loss leads to an increase in NAA." “We also found that high worry also produced low levels of NAA in the hippocampus, but was not associated with a high body mass index (BMI),” Dr. Coplan said. Dr. Coplan and his team looked at persons with a BMI equal to or greater than 25. Normal weight is defined as a BMI of 18.5-24.9, overweight between 25 and 29.9, and obesity at a BMI of 30 or greater.
Dr. Coplan’s article, “Reduced Hippocampal N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) as a Biomarker for Overweight,” is available online at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158213001733.
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About SUNY Downstate Medical Center
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative including the Downstate Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT for early-stage and more mature companies, respectively.
SUNY Downstate ranks twelfth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.