Brain Structure in Acutely Underweight and Partially Weight-Restored Individuals With Anorexia Nervosa: A Coordinated Analysis by the ENIGMA Eating Disorders Working Group

Walton, Esther; Bernardoni, Fabio; Batury, Victoria-Luise; Bahnsen, Klaas; Larivière, Sara; Abbate-Daga, Giovanni; Andrés-Perpiñá, Susana; Bang, Lasse; Bischoff‐Grethe, Amanda; Brooks, Samantha; Campbell, Iain C.; Cascino, Giammarco; Castro‐Fornieles, Josefina; Collantoni, Enrico; D’Agata, Federico; Dahmen, Brigitte; Danner, Unna N.; Favaro, Angela; Feusner, Jamie D.; Frank, Guido; Friederich, Hans‐Christoph; Graner, John L.; Herpertz‐Dahlmann, Beate; Heß, Andreas; Horndasch, Stefanie; Kaplan, Allan S.; Kaufmann, L; Kaye, Walter H.; Khalsa, Sahib S.; LaBar, Kevin S.; Lavagnino, Luca; Lázaro, Luisa; Manara, Renzo; Miles, Amy; Milos, Gabriella; Alessio, Maria Monteleone; Monteleone, Palmiero; Mwangi, Benson; O’Daly, Owen; Pariente, José; Roesch, Johannes; Schmidt, Ulrike; Seitz, Jochen; Shott, Megan E.; Simon, Joe J.; Smeets, Paul A.M.; Tamnes, Christian K.; Tenconi, Elena; Thomopoulos, Sophia I.; Elburg, Annemarie; Voineskos, Aristotle N.; Polier, Georg G. von; Wierenga, Christina E.; Zucker, Nancy; Jahanshad, Neda; King, Joseph A.; Thompson, Paul M.; Berner, Laura A.; Ehrlich, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.04.022

Cited by 62 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Given the possible involvement of the thalamus in the pathophysiology of AN, it is interesting to assess whether this structure is altered in patients with acute AN and whether the alteration persists also following weight restoration. A significant global reduction in thalamic volume in patients with AN has already been observed in some previous studies (King et al, 2015;Martin Monzon et al, 2017;Yue et al, 2018) and recently confirmed by a large Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) study involving more than 600 participants (Walton et al, 2022). Alterations in thalamic structure appear to be present already at the early stages of the disease (Lavagnino et al, 2015) and interestingly, a study investigating the genetic covariation between the volumes of subcortical structures and the risk for AN evidenced an inverse correlation between thalamus volume and risk for the disorder (Walton et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introduction and Aimssupporting

confidence: 67%

“…In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in understanding the neurobiological correlates of this disorder. Alterations have been observed in whole‐brain cortical thickness, surface area, grey and white matter volumes, gyrification, and cortical complexity (Collantoni et al., 2020; Seitz et al., 2016; Walton et al., 2022). Along with whole‐brain analyses, researchers also focussed on specific subcortical structures which could play a particular role in the pathogenesis of AN, such as the hippocampus (Beadle et al., 2015; Collantoni et al., 2021), the amygdala (Giordano et al., 2001), and the striatum (Favaro et al., 2014).…”

Section: Introduction and Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Volume and complexity of the thalamus in Anorexia Nervosa: An exploratory evaluation

Collantoni

Meregalli

Manara

et al. 2022

Euro Eating Disorders Rev

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: Recent neuroscientific findings have highlighted the role of the thalamus in several cognitive functions, ranging from perception to cognitive flexibility, memory, and body representation. Since some of these functions may be involved in the pathophysiology of Anorexia Nervosa (AN), this study aims at exploring thalamic structure in different phases of the disorder. Method:The sample included 38 patients with acute AN, 20 patients who fully recovered from AN (recAN), and 38 healthy controls (HC), all female. All participants underwent high-resolution MRI. The volumes of the whole thalamus and 25 thalamic nuclei were extracted using an automated segmentation algorithm, and thalamic fractal dimension was estimated using the calcFD toolbox.Results: Patients with acute AN, compared to HC, displayed reduced thalamic volume and complexity both at the whole level and at the level of specific nuclei. In patients recAN, instead, alterations were observed only at the level of the right laterodorsal and central lateral nuclei. Conclusions:In the acute phase of the disorder patients with AN present a widespread reduction in thalamic volume and complexity. However, these alterations seem to normalise almost completely following weight restoration, thus suggesting the involvement of malnutrition-related mechanisms.

show abstract

Section: Introduction and Aimssupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Introduction and Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Volume and complexity of the thalamus in Anorexia Nervosa: An exploratory evaluation

Collantoni

Meregalli

Manara

et al. 2022

Euro Eating Disorders Rev

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Firstly, it is a cross‐sectional study that only includes patients in the acute phase of AN. Since malnutrition and related alterations in brain structure could contribute to the difficulties shown by patients with AN in performing cognitive tasks, it would be important to assess the effects of weight recovery, which is usually associated with a partial restoration of brain structures, on the evaluated cognitive functions 51–53 . Secondly, we only recruited female participants and thus our results cannot be generalized to the male population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond body image: what body schema and motor imagery can tell us about the way patients with anorexia nervosa experience their body

Meregalli

Tenconi

Madan

et al. 2022

Psychiatry Clin Neurosci

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aim Recent evidence suggests that the body image disturbance often observed in patients with anorexia nervosa also extends to the body schema. According to the embodiment approach, the body schema is not only involved in motor execution, but also in tasks that only require a mental simulation of a movement such as motor imagery, mental rotation of bodies, and visuospatial perspective-taking. The aim of the present study was to assess the ability of patients with anorexia in mentally simulate movements.Methods The sample included 52 patients with acute anorexia and 62 healthy controls. All participants completed three tests of explicit motor imagery, a mental rotation test and a test of visuospatial perspective-taking. ResultsPatients with anorexia nervosa, with respect to controls, reported greater difficulties in imagining movements according to a first-person perspective, lower accuracy in motor imagery, selective impairment in the mental rotation of human figures, and reduced ability in assuming a different egocentric visuospatial perspective. ConclusionThese results are indicative of a specific alteration in motor imagery in patients with anorexia nervosa. Interestingly, patients' difficulties appear to be limited to those tasks which specifically rely on the body schema, while patients and controls performed similarly in the 3D objects mental rotation task.

show abstract

“…In contrast to the widespread associations between BMI PGS and morphometric features of the cortical mantle, AN PGS were nominally associated with reduced caudate volume only. Both adolescent and adult patients with AN demonstrate altered caudate activation during learning and decision-making tasks [82,83], and a recent meta-analysis from the ENIGMA AN Working Group reported widespread reductions in subcortical grey matter volume, including caudate volume, in acutely ill and partially weight-restored AN patients [84]. Although we studied a population-based cohort, our findings might suggest that the observed subcortical alterations in AN are partially attributable to genetic factors and may constitute a risk factor for this illness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing a multivariate model of brain-mediated genetic influences on disordered eating in the ABCD cohort

Westwater

Mallard

Warrier

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Eating disorders (EDs) are complex psychiatric conditions that often emerge during adolescence, and affected individuals frequently demonstrate high rates of psychiatric comorbidity, particularly with depressive and anxiety disorders. Although risk for EDs reflects both genetic and neurobiological factors, knowledge of how genetic risk for EDs relates to neurobiology and psychiatric symptoms during critical developmental periods remains limited. We therefore implemented a novel multivariate framework, which sought to advance knowledge of the etiology of EDs by simultaneously estimating associations between genetic risk, brain structure and ED-related psychopathology symptoms in over 4,500 adolescents of European ancestry from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (M(SD)age=119.29(7.49) months). Polygenic scores for anorexia nervosa (AN PGS) and body mass index (BMI PGS) were generated and related to three morphometric brain features-cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical grey matter volume-and to latent psychopathology factors using structural equation modeling. We identified a three-factor structure of ED-related psychopathology symptoms: eating, distress and fear factors. Increased BMI PGS were uniquely associated with greater eating factor scores, whereas AN PGS were unrelated to psychopathology factors. Moreover, genetic risk for high BMI and for AN had distinct neural correlates, where greater BMI PGS predicted widespread increases in cortical thickness and reductions in surface area while AN PGS were nominally related to reduced caudate volume. Altered default mode and visual network thickness was associated with greater eating factor scores, whereas distress and fear factor scores reflected a shared reduction in somatomotor network thickness. Our novel findings indicate that greater genetic risk for high BMI and altered cortical thickness of canonical brain networks underpin ED symptomatology in early adolescence. As neurobiological factors appear to shape disordered eating earlier in the life course than previously thought, these results underscore the need for early detection and intervention efforts for EDs.

show abstract

Brain Structure in Acutely Underweight and Partially Weight-Restored Individuals With Anorexia Nervosa: A Coordinated Analysis by the ENIGMA Eating Disorders Working Group

Cited by 62 publications

References 55 publications

Volume and complexity of the thalamus in Anorexia Nervosa: An exploratory evaluation

Volume and complexity of the thalamus in Anorexia Nervosa: An exploratory evaluation

Beyond body image: what body schema and motor imagery can tell us about the way patients with anorexia nervosa experience their body

Assessing a multivariate model of brain-mediated genetic influences on disordered eating in the ABCD cohort

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About