Volumetric Analysis of Subcortical Structures in Obese at 3T

Abstract

Obesity usually occurs due to homeostasis and hedonic food intake behavior caused by plasticity variation in both cortical and subcortical brain structures. However, little volumetric analysis has been done to study the relationships between obesity and subcortical structures. For this study, we aimed to investigate the volumetric differences of subcortical structures between 21 obese patients and 10 healthy controls using high resolution 3T MRI T1-weighted scans. Obese patients showed reduced subcortical gray matter volume in right caudate and right nucleus accumbens and enlarged volume in right amygdala. Vertex-wise shape analysis of subcortical structures showed bilateral caudate alterations in obese patients. Moreover, the bilateral amygdala negatively correlated with increasing age in obese patients. In conclusion, we present data showing association between obesity and subcortical brain structures. Various studies have shown that morphological changes can cause functional modifications in the brain. Therefore, we believe our analysis of volumetric differences in subcortical structures could be helpful for identifying neurophysiological changes that occur in obese patients.