Central Regulation of Eating Behaviors in Humans: Evidence from Functional Neuroimaging Studies

Neuroimaging has great potential to provide insight into the neural response to food stimuli. Remarkable advances have been made in understanding the neural activity underlying food perception, not only in normal eating but also in obesity, eating disorders, and disorders of gut-brain interaction in recent decades. In addition to the abnormal brain function in patients with eating disorders compared to healthy controls, new therapies, such as neurofeedback and neurostimulation techniques, have been developed that target the malfunctioning brain regions in patients with eating disorders based on the results of neuroimaging studies. In this review, we present an overview of early and more recent research on the central processing and regulation of eating behavior in healthy and patient populations. In order to better understand the relationship between the gut and the brain as well as the neural mechanisms underlying abnormal ingestive behaviors, we also provide suggestions for future directions to enhance our current methods used in food-related neuroimaging studies.