Several areas of the brain, including regions that play a critical role in learning and memory and in the control of emotions, are larger in adolescents who are living with obesity, new research being presented at year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025) has found.
The finding, from a study of thousands of teenagers in the US, raises concerns that obesity affects not only physical health but also learning, memory and control of emotions, says lead researcher Dr Augusto César F. De Moraes, of UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin, Department of Epidemiology, Texas, USA. "This is particularly alarming, given that the teenage years are such an important time for brain development," he adds.
The percentage of children and adolescents worldwide who are living with obesity more than quadrupled among girls (from 1.7% to 6.9%) and among boys (from 2.1% to 9.3%) between 1990 and 2022.1
In the US, it is estimated that more than one in three children aged 5 to 14 (36.2% of boys and 37.2% of girls) are living with overweight or obesity – equating to more than 15 million children.2
Obesity – particularly abdominal obesity – has been linked to changes in brain development in the past, with regions key to cognition and the regulation of emotions seemingly particularly vulnerable.
Health inequalities like poor access to quality education, safe neighbourhoods and healthy food are well-known contributors to physical health problems – but their role in brain development and cognition is often overlooked.
To find out more about how obesity and health inequalities affect brain structure and cognition, Dr De Moraes and colleagues in the US, Brazil, and Spain analysed data from 3,320 participants in the ABCD study, an ongoing study into how childhood experiences affect brain development and health.3
