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Updated: Jul 9, 2026

Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans
Published on: March 19, 2014
Imaging obesity: fMRI, food reward, and feeding
Harvey J Grill1, Karolina P Skibicka, Matthew R Hayes
1Graduate Group of Psychology and Graduate Group of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. grill@psych.upenn.edu
Abstract:
Animal studies have revealed brain regions that control homeostatic feeding, but the rampant overeating contributing to the obesity epidemic suggests the participation of "nonhomeostatic" control centers. Recent papers by Batterham et al. (2007) and Farooqi et al. (2007) link peptide YY(3-36) and leptin to the activation of nonhomeostatic brain regions.
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