Resting-State Functional Connectivity Differences in College Students with and without Food Insecurity

Research trends and gaps concerning food insecurity in college students in the United States: a scoping review

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review explores the broad body of peer-reviewed research measuring food insecurity in post-secondary students in the U.S. to identify trends and gaps to inform future research.

METHODS

Three search engines (PubMed, Web of Science, and CINHAL Full Text) were systematically searched for articles reporting on food security status in U.S. college students.

RESULTS

One-hundred and sixty studies met inclusion criteria. Emerging high-risk student characteristics include gender non-conforming (GNC) and non-binary, financial independence in college, and pregnant and parenting students. Emerging correlates include lack of transportation, anxiety, and eating disorders.

CONCLUSIONS

Prevalence data can be used by colleges to advocate for services and programs. Additional multi-institutional cohort, longitudinal and qualitative studies are needed to identify timely interventions and effective solutions. A new "rights-based" approach to food security solutions that includes nutrition and food literacy for all students is needed.

Experimental biology can inform our understanding of food insecurity

Food insecurity is a major public health issue. Millions of households worldwide have intermittent and unpredictable access to food and this experience is associated with greater risk for a host of negative health outcomes. While food insecurity is a contemporary concern, we can understand its effects better if we acknowledge that there are ancient biological programs that evolved to respond to the experience of food scarcity and uncertainty, and they may be particularly sensitive to food insecurity during development. Support for this conjecture comes from common findings in several recent animal studies that have modeled insecurity by manipulating predictability of food access in various ways. Using different experimental paradigms in different species, these studies have shown that experience of insecure access to food can lead to changes in weight, motivation and cognition. Some of these studies account for changes in weight through changes in metabolism, while others observe increases in feeding and motivation to work for food. It has been proposed that weight gain is an adaptive response to the experience of food insecurity as 'insurance' in an uncertain future, while changes in motivation and cognition may reflect strategic adjustments in foraging behavior. Animal studies also offer the opportunity to make in-depth controlled studies of mechanisms and behavior. So far, there is evidence that the experience of food insecurity can impact metabolic efficiency, reproductive capacity and dopamine neuron synapses. Further work on behavior, the central and peripheral nervous system, the gut and liver, along with variation in age of exposure, will be needed to better understand the full body impacts of food insecurity at different stages of development.

Methods for Assessing Health Outcomes Associated with Food Insecurity in the United States College Student Population: A Narrative Review

In the United States, college students experience disproportionate food insecurity (FI) rates compared to the national prevalence. The experience of acute and chronic FI has been associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes in this population. This narrative review aims to summarize the current methodologies for assessing health outcomes associated with the experience of FI in college students in the United States. To date, assessing the health outcomes of FI has predominately consisted of subjective assessments, such as self-reported measures of dietary intake, perceived health status, stress, depression, anxiety, and sleep behaviors. This review, along with the emergence of FI as an international public health concern, establishes the need for novel, innovative, and objective biomarkers to evaluate the short- and long-term impacts of FI on physical and mental health outcomes in college students. The inclusion of objective biomarkers will further elucidate the relationship between FI and a multitude of health outcomes to better inform strategies for reducing the pervasiveness of FI in the United States college student population.

Late-life food insecurity and cognition: exploring timing, duration, and mechanisms among older Mexican adults

BACKGROUND

Food insecurity (FI) remains a global public health problem. FI is more prevalent in low-and middle-income countries than high-income countries. FI is related with worse cognitive outcomes including cognitive function, cognitive decline, and cognitive impairment. Few studies have sought to identify how patterns of FI relate with cognitive function in old age and the potential mechanisms underlying this association.

METHODS

Data from the 2015 and 2018 waves of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (n = 9,654, age 50+) were used in this study. Reports of FI in 2015 and 2018 were combined to create four patterns of FI groups: "persistently food secure", "became food secure", "became food insecure", and "persistently food insecure". Linear regression was used to estimate associations between patterns of FI and cognitive task performance. The mediating roles of depressive symptoms, body mass index, and chronic conditions were tested using Karlson, Holm, and Breen methodology.

RESULTS

Approximately half of the sample were persistently food secure, 17% became food secure, 14% became FI, and 15% experienced persistent FI. When adjusting for demographic/socioeconomic confounders, persistent FI related with worse Verbal Learning, Verbal Recall, Visual Scanning, and Verbal Fluency performance compared to the persistently food secure. Becoming FI related with worse Verbal Learning, Visual Scanning, and Verbal Fluency. Mediation analyses provided support for depressive symptoms mediating associations between FI and poorer cognition, where 48% of the association between persistent FI and worse Verbal Recall performance was attributed to higher depressive symptoms. Becoming food secure was not associated with cognitive performance compared to the persistently food secure.

CONCLUSIONS

FI may represent an important modifiable risk factor for poorer cognitive outcomes among older adults. Public health efforts should focus on providing stable food access to older adults, especially those living in poverty.

Modulations of static and dynamic functional connectivity among brain networks by electroacupuncture in post-stroke aphasia

Introduction

Post-stroke aphasia (PSA) is a language disorder caused by left hemisphere stroke. Electroacupuncture (EA) is a minimally invasive therapeutic option for PSA treatment. Tongli (HT5) and Xuanzhong (GB39), two important language-associated acupoints, are frequently used in the rehabilitation of patients with PSA. Preliminary evidence indicated functional activation in distributed cortical areas upon HT5 and GB39 stimulation. However, research on the modulation of dynamic and static functional connectivity (FC) in the brain by EA in PSA is lacking.

Method

This study aimed to investigate the PSA-related effects of EA stimulation at HT5 and GB39 on neural processing. Thirty-five participants were recruited, including 19 patients with PSA and 16 healthy controls (HCs). The BOLD signal was analyzed by static independent component analysis, generalized psychophysiological interactions, and dynamic independent component analysis, considering variables such as age, sex, and years of education.

Results

The results revealed that PSA showed activated clusters in the left putamen, left postcentral gyrus (PostCG), and left angular gyrus in the salience network (SN) compared to the HC group. The interaction effect on temporal properties of networks showed higher variability of SN (F = 2.23, positive false discovery rate [pFDR] = 0.017). The interaction effect on static FC showed increased functional coupling between the right calcarine and right lingual gyrus (F = 3.16, pFDR = 0.043). For the dynamic FC, at the region level, the interaction effect showed lower variability and higher frequencies of circuit 3, with the strongest connections between the supramarginal gyrus and posterior cingulum (F = 5.42, pFDR = 0.03), middle cingulum and PostCG (F = 5.27, pFDR = 0.036), and triangle inferior frontal and lingual gyrus (F = 5.57, pFDR = 0.026). At the network level, the interaction effect showed higher variability in occipital network-language network (LN) and cerebellar network (CN) coupling, with stronger connections between the LN and CN (F = 4.29, pFDR = 0.042). Dynamic FC values between the triangle inferior frontal and lingual gyri were anticorrelated with transcribing, describing, and dictating scores in the Chinese Rehabilitation Research Center for Chinese Standard Aphasia Examination.

Discussion

These findings suggest that EA stimulation may improve language function, as it significantly modulated the nodes of regions/networks involved in the LN, SN, CN, occipital cortex, somatosensory regions, and cerebral limbic system.