Abstract
Acute exercise suppresses appetite and alters food‐cue reactivity, but the extent exercise‐induced changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) influences the blood‐oxygen‐level‐dependent (BOLD) signal during appetite‐related paradigms is not known. This study examined the impact of acute running on visual food‐cue reactivity and explored whether such responses are influenced by CBF variability. In a randomised crossover design, 23 men (mean ± SD: 24 ± 4 years, 22.9 ± 2.1 kg/mWe investigated the impact of a single running bout on cerebral blood flow (CBF) and food cue reactivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy men. Running did not alter the time‐course of grey matter or regional CBF up to 30 min after exercise cessation but increased food cue reactivity in brain regions implicated in attention, reward and episodic memory retrieval. Exercise‐related BOLD signal changes were detected in the presence of underlying CBF.
