Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 167, 1 December 2016, Pages 60-70
Physiology & Behavior

Review
The anterior medial temporal lobes: Their role in food intake and body weight regulation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.08.028Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The amygdala and hippocampus play a major role in food intake and weight regulation.

  • These functions are far less known to cognitive and affective scientists.

  • This review uniquely expands on the interactions between these two brain structures.

Abstract

The anterior medial temporal lobes are one of the most studied parts of the brain. Classically, their two main structures – the amygdalae and the hippocampi – have been linked to key cognitive and affective functions, related in particular to learning and memory. Based on abundant evidence, we will argue for an alternative but complementary point of view: they may also play a major role in food intake and body weight regulation. First, an overview is given of early clinical evidence in this line of thought. Subsequently, empirical evidence is presented on how food intake, including in the extreme case of obesity, may relate to amygdalian and hippocampal functioning. The focus is on the amygdala's role in processing the relevance of food stimuli, cue-induced feeding, and stress-induced eating and on the hippocampus' involvement in the use of interoceptive signals of hunger and satiety, as well as memory and inhibitory processes related to food intake. Additionally, an elaboration takes place on possible reciprocal links between food intake, body weight, and amygdala and hippocampus functioning. Finally, issues that seemed particularly critical for future research in the field are discussed.

Section snippets

The anterior medial temporal lobes – classical role

The anterior medial temporal lobes are composed of two major structures – the amygdalae and the hippocampi. Both of them belong to the most widely studied areas of the brain, notably because of their involvement in key cognitive and affective functions.

It is classical neuroscience textbook knowledge that the amygdala is involved in emotion processing (e.g., [72], [175]). In particular, its role in fear conditioning paradigms has often been underlined [89], [114]. Recently, the idea that the

Klüver-Bucy syndrome

Klüver and Bucy [86] reported a syndrome that follows bitemporal dysfunction. Among other things, this syndrome is characterized by a hyperorality, bulimia, and the ingestion of non-food items (such as tea bags, feces or even shoe polish). These symptoms were reported both in rhesus monkeys and in humans (see for instance [91]). Thus, it appears that the dysfunction of both temporal lobes can lead to excessive intake of food as well as non-food items.

Psychomotor epileptic patients

Gastaut [42] has reported two types of

Rationale for the interest in the amygdala in relation to food intake

If the amygdala is involved in relevance processing in general, it follows that it should also be involved in assessing the (more specific) meaningfulness of food-related stimuli (e.g., [21]), because of their high relevance for homeostasis. Furthermore, the same argument can be applied to cues predicting food intake. In this article, we will consequently develop the hypothesis that the amygdala is involved (1) in the relevance processing of food stimuli, including (2) in the detection of cues

Rationale for the interest in hippocampus in relation to food intake

To suggest a potential role of the hippocampus in food intake and body weight regulation may at first strike cognitive and affective researchers in human neuroscience as a somewhat unconventional idea. Although highly connected to the amygdala [127], it has been claimed that the “removal of the hippocampus does not affect olfaction or taste” ([11], p. 857). However, “evidence exists for input to the hippocampus from the amygdaloid complex, implicating it in the processing of emotional

Interactions between the amygdala and the hippocampus

As previously mentioned, the selfish brain theory (e.g., [121]) assumes that the brain (approximately 2% of the body's mass) gives priority to its energy needs (approximately 50% of the total body glucose utilization is related to its metabolism). The hippocampus/amygdala system is key in this process – it is assumed to be involved in energy homeostasis and metabolic processes (i.e., glucose fluxes; [162]). Accordingly, the selfish brain theory assumes that obesity is “the sequelae of a

Conclusion

In this review, we have argued that the anterior medial temporal lobes – composed of the amygdala and the hippocampus - may play an important role in food intake and body weight regulation. The amygdala is essential to assess the relevance of food stimuli, and to cue-elicited feeding and cue-induced inhibition of feeding. In modern environments, where cues associated with feeding are much more present than cues associated with inhibition of feeding, the abundance of these cues may lead to

Outstanding questions

Are the anterior medial temporal lobes also crucial for representing future food intake? Information related to recent eating is encoded in memory and influences future food intake (e.g., [54], [55], [58]). The hippocampus encodes information relative not only to past events but also to future ones [153]. The amygdala is involved in representing future positive events [146]. From this evidence the following question follows: Can hippocampus and amygdala dysfunctions relate in difficulties

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by an Early.Postdoc mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to Géraldine Coppin (PBGEP1-139853). The authors thank Vanessa Sennwald, Dr. Alexander Skiles, Prof. Dana M. Small and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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