You might be what you eat, in line with the adage. But it surely’s not only the body that is impacted. Based on research from UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can affect food decisions, weight gain and even the microstructure of the brain.

The study, appearing in Communications Medicine, a Nature journal, finds poor quality of accessible foods, increased intake of calories from foods high in trans-fatty acids, and environments that don’t foster physical activity, all prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods, disrupt the pliability of data processing within the brain that’s involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition.

Previous research showed that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can impact brain health, but on this study, researchers did an in depth evaluation of the brain’s cortex to find out how living in a disadvantaged area can change specific areas of the brain that play different roles.

We found that neighborhood drawback was related to differences within the positive structure of the cortex of the brain. A few of these differences were linked to higher body mass index and correlated with high intake of the trans-fatty acids present in fried fast food.”

Arpana Gupta, PhD, Co-Director of the Goodman-Luskin Center and Director of the Neuroimaging Core

“Our results suggest that regions of the brain involved in reward, emotion, and the acquisition of data and understanding is perhaps affected by features of neighborhood drawback that contribute to obesity,” said Gupta, senior writer. “This highlights the importance of addressing dietary quality issues in disadvantaged neighborhoods to guard brain health.”

Neighborhood drawback is defined by a mixture of such aspects as low median income, low education level, crowding, and lack of complete plumbing. This study included 92 participants – 27 men and 65 women – from the greater Los Angeles area. Demographic and body mass index information was collected, and neighborhood drawback was assessed as to its area deprivation index (ADI) using University of Wisconsin School of Medicine’s Public Health’s Neighborhood Atlas.

Earlier studies have found that folks living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are at higher risk of obesity on account of the poor quality of accessible foods, increased intake of calories from foods high in trans-fatty acids, and environments that don’t foster physical activity.

On this study, researchers focused on the connection between ADI and neuroimaging results at 4 levels of the brain cortex to analyze in additional refined detail the connections between neighborhood drawback and brain structure. Participants underwent two varieties of MRI scans that, when analyzed together, provide insights into brain structure, signaling and performance.

“Different populations of cells exist in numerous layers of the cortex, where there are different signaling mechanisms and information-processing functions,” said Lisa Kilpatrick, PhD, a researcher within the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center specializing in brain signatures related to brain-body dysregulation, the study’s first writer. “Examining the microstructure at different cortical levels provides a greater understanding of alterations in cell populations, processes and communication routes that could be affected by living in a disadvantaged neighborhood.”

Based on the outcomes, worse ADI rankings were related to communication changes in brain regions which can be vital for social interaction. Other changes occurred in regions involved in reward, emotion regulation, and better cognitive processes – and these changes seemed to be affected by trans-fatty acid intake. Together, the findings suggest that aspects prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods that encourage poor weight loss program and unhealthy weight gain “disrupt the pliability of data processing involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition.”

Source:

University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences

Journal reference:

Kilpatrick, L. A., et al. (2023). Mediation of the association between disadvantaged neighborhoods and cortical microstructure by body mass index. Communications Medicine. doi.org/10.1038/s43856-023-00350-5.