News Neuroscience

Obese women struggle to learn food associations

In lab experiment, they fail to connect color signal with tasty reward

FOOD FLAW  Obese women had trouble learning which cue was reliably paired with peanut M&Ms or pretzels, a new study finds. 

Anders Lagerås/Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

By Laura Sanders

- More than 2 years ago

Obese women have a blind spot, but only when food is in the picture. In laboratory tests, obese women had trouble learning an association between a colored screen and a reward of M&M’s or pretzels, scientists report July 17 in Current Biology.