Research paper
Gearhardt AN, Yokum S, Orr PT, Stice E, Corbin WR, Brownell KD. Neural correlates of food addiction. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2011;68(8):808-816. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.32
Why we cite it
fMRI evidence that people with elevated food-addiction scores show activation patterns paralleling those seen in substance dependence — greater reward-region activity during food anticipation, with reduced inhibitory-control activity during consumption.
”Establishing a neurobiological basis” was too strong and `khp03` had already said so (corrected 2026-09-02, card 6NM98H). The abstract’s verb is correlated: higher scores ”correlated with greater activation.” `khp03`’s Sourcing block reached this first — ”it establishes a neural correlate” — and the correction never travelled back to this record. Fifth instance today of a correction reaching one layer and not the other.
The design, since the numbers look inconsistent across the corpus and are not: 48 young women scanned, final N = 39 after exclusions, mean age 20.8, mean BMI 28.0 (range 23.8–39.2), milkshake-versus-tasteless paradigm. The reported contrast rests on 15 high-symptom against 11 low-symptom participants. So 48, 39 and 15 vs 11 are all correct and all mean different things — the abstract gives 48, the knowledge files give 39, and both are right.
And it is cross-sectional and correlational: it measures a response and its association with a questionnaire score. It does not show that foods cause the pattern, that the pattern causes the eating, or — as `khp03` records separately — that the foods were designed to produce it.