Too much candy damages brain reward circuits

Too much candy during your early years damages the brain’s reward circuits, making it hard for you to have fun later in life.

In a study on rats, Wiley researchers show that over-consumption of sugary food decreases the enjoyment of the same food later in life. The decrease in reward relates to reduced activity in one of the key hubs of the brain’s reward circuitry, called the nucleus accumbens. Such long-lasting alterations could have important implications for reward-related disorders such as substance abuse or eating disorders.

“In spite of the dramatic increase in the consumption of sweet palatable foods during adolescence in our modern societies, the long-term consequences of such exposure on brain reward processing remain poorly understood,” said Dr. Martine Cador, senior author of the European Journal of Neuroscience study.

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Category: Features, Health alert