You remember those “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” PSAs from the 80s? Well, now they just may need to create a new set – “This Is Your Brain on Food.” A new study at NYU School of Medicine and the Nathan Kline Institute discovered that chronic overeating can actually damage your brain.

Slash Food reports that brain researcher Dr. Antonio Convit, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at NYU Med, “looked at the brains of 44 middle-aged obese people and 19 lean ones, using MRI’s and other tests. What he found were changes in the obese subjects in two parts of the brain that play major roles in eating. In obese people there was more water in the amygdala, which, among its functions, regulates feeding behavior. He also found that the orbital frontal cortex of the brains of obese people was smaller, which meant it had less ability to perform one of its key functions — inhibit automatic responses — such as the impulse to eat that whole plate of cookies.”

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• Tag: brain, eating habits, health, obesity, research, science