A Postmortem Study of Frontal and Temporal Gyri Thickness and Cell Number in Human Obesity

Objective This study aimed to compare cortex thickness and neuronal cell density in postmortem brain tissue from people with overweight or obesity and normal weight. Methods The cortex thickness and neuron density of eight donors with overweight or obesity (mean = 31.6 kg/m2 ; SD = 4.35; n = 8; 6 male) and eight donors with normal weight (mean = 21.8 kg/m2 ; SD = 1.5; n = 8; 5 male) were compared. All participants were Mexican and lived in Mexico City. Randomly selected thickness measures of different cortex areas from the frontal and temporal lobes were analyzed based on high-resolution real-size photographs. A histological analysis of systematic-random fields was used to quantify the number of neurons in postmortem left and right of the first, second, and third gyri of frontal and temporal lobe brain samples. Results No statistical difference was found in cortical thickness between donors with overweight or obesity and individuals with normal weight. A smaller number of neurons was found among the donors with overweight or obesity than the donors with normal weight at different frontal and temporal areas. Conclusions A lower density of neurons is associated with overweight or obesity. The morphological basis for structural brain changes in obesity requires further investigation.