Overweight and obesity are increasing throughout the world. The main reasons for this are overeating and the availability of appetizing food which are high in calories, as well as psychological factors such as coping with stress and emotional eating. The biological relationships between obesity and abnormal eating behavior are largely unknown. Imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) with markers for the blood flow and glucose consumption enable recording of regional changes in the context of different eating behavior. These differences in eating behavior during the intake of food as well as the subsequent activation of certain areas of the rather in various substance dependence disorders, it is currently being discussed whether obesity should be categorized as an addictive disorder. This has a direct effect on the evaluation of obesity as an illness. By means of PET it was recently demonstrated, that the adipokine leptin also influences the central dopaminergic transmission [8]. Changes on the presynaptic side, i.e. of the dopamine transporter, have not been seen up to now [9], however they are probably only relevant in the case of manifest obesity [10].
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