Frauke Beyer | Polygenetic risk for common obesity in the brain

Common obesity is a complex trait and both westernized lifestyle

(Swinburn, 2011) and polygenic susceptibility (Elks, 2012) contribute to

the world-wide rise in prevalence (Finucane, 2011). In the past decade

genome-wide association studies have led to the discovery of more than

200 single nucleotid polymorphisms (SNP) associated with common obesity.

Many of these are located in genes expressed in the central nervous

system – however it remains largely unclear by which mechanisms these

variations contribute to the risk for obesity.

In this talk I would like to present results from the LIFE cohort study

addressing this question.

In the first part I will focus on food addiction. This conceptual model

can help to understand the development of obesity in some individuals

who show eating behaviors similar to patterns in substance addiction

like losses of control over eating or eating despite negative

consequences. We therefore investigated the association of food

addiction and cortical thickness and its genetic variation in 500

healthy adults.

In the second part I would like to discuss two other approaches to

investigate the imaging genetics of obesity: genome-wide association

studies on brain phenotypes within large-scale consortia and

multivariate analysis of structural MRI and genetic data.