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The development of eating disorders is associated with a body-related attentional bias. Although eating disorders are especially prevalent in adolescence, so far, no study has analyzed gaze patterns and state body image in response to viewing one's own body in youth. To fill this gap, the present study aimed to examine a body-related attentional bias and state body satisfaction in adolescents with various forms of eating disorders. Girls with anorexia nervosa, restrictive type (AN-R; n = 30), anorexia nervosa, binge eating/purging type (AN-BP; n = 26), bulimia nervosa (BN; n = 22), clinical controls with anxiety disorders (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 43) looked at photographs of their own and a peer's body, while their spontaneous eye movements were recorded. After stimulus presentation, state body satisfaction and individual attractiveness ratings for areas of the presented stimuli were assessed. An analysis of variance revealed that participants of all subgroups showed an attentive preference for unattractive areas of one's own body. Girls with AN-R attended significantly longer to unattractive body areas than both control groups and significantly shorter to attractive body areas than healthy controls. State body dissatisfaction was more prominent in all eating disorder subgroups, with significantly lower scores in BN compared to AN-R. In general, the higher the state body dissatisfaction, the stronger was the deficit orientation on one's own body. The attentional bias towards unattractive body areas, which is most pronounced in AN-R, indicates that interventions aiming to modify distorted attention might be promising in the prevention and treatment of eating disorders in adolescence.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been tried therapeutically in major depression. In order to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of rTMS in psychotic patients, 12 participants (four women, eight men) with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV criteria, aged 25 to 63 years (mean (+/-s.d) 40.4+/-11.0), were enrolled in the study. Following a double-blind crossover design, patients were treated at random with 2 weeks of daily left prefrontal rTMS (20 2s 20 Hz stimulations at 80% motor threshold over 20 min, dorsolateral preforntal cortex) and 2 weeks of sham stimulation. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale decreased under active rTMS (p <0.05), whereas depressive symptoms (BDI) and anxiety (STAI) did not change significantly. Prefrontal rTMS might be effective in the non-pharmacological treatment of psychotic patients.

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