The role of cortico-striatal pathways in cue-triggered motivational processes have been extensively studied. However, recent work has begun to examine the potential contribution of plasticity in these circuits to obesity. Despite the inclusion of women in human obesity studies examining neurobehavioral alterations in cue-triggered motivation, preclinical studies have focused mainly on male subjects. This lack of female subjects in preclinical research had led to a gap in the basic understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying over-eating in females. In this review, we highlight recent work from our lab and others that has begun to elucidate how diet, obesity, and individual susceptibility to weight gain influence functional and structural plasticity within the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex in adult rats. As is the case throughout neuroscience, studies of females or sex differences are largely lacking in this area. Thus, below we describe preliminary neurobehavioral results from female studies in our labs and point out areas for future investigation.

皮质纹状体途径在提示触发的动机过程中的作用已得到广泛研究。但是，最近的工作已经开始研究这些回路中可塑性对肥胖的潜在贡献。尽管在人类肥胖研究中纳入了女性，以研究提示触发的动机中的神经行为改变，但临床前研究主要集中在男性受试者上。临床前研究中缺乏女性受试者，这导致在对女性暴饮暴食的潜在神经机制的基本理解上存在差距。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了我们实验室和其他实验室的最新工作，这些工作已经开始阐明饮食，肥胖和个体对体重增加的敏感性如何影响成年大鼠伏隔核和前额叶皮层内的功能和结构可塑性。就像整个神经科学一样，在这一领域中缺乏女性或性别差异的研究。因此，以下我们描述了实验室中女性研究的初步神经行为结果，并指出了需要进一步研究的领域。