Neurobiology and the Changing Face of Eating Disorder Treatment: Healing the Eating Disordered Brain

Abstract

By recognizing eating disorders (EDs) as disruptions in brain circuitry, neuroscience has begun to shed light on how people make changes in psychotherapy. The clinician who treats the eating disordered patient also treats the eating disordered brain. It is time for practitioners to become beter acquainted with the organ they treat, and to apply neuroplasticity research indings to clinical practice. Eating disorders and body image disturbances signify the loss of integrity of the core self. Twenty-irst century research and technology has validated the age-old notion that healthy neuronal connectivity within, and between, mind(s), brain(s), and body(s) reintegrates and deines the healthy self.The concept of the "self" as embodied (grounded in somatic reality) expands the scope of efective healing practices. Neurophysiological (somatosensory education and mindful psychotherapeutic atachments) interventions that support the emergence of embodied mindfulness and sensory awareness facilitate the reintegration of the eating disordered brain, and of the fragmented core self. Both lie at the heart of eating disorder recovery. Nowhere in the ield of mental health are the concepts of the embedded self and embodied healing as signiicant as in the treatment of eating disorders and body image disturbances. This article discusses the healing impact of neurophysiological connections, intrapersonal and interpersonal, that foster recovery of the self.Keywords: eating disorders, neurobiology, somatosensory interventions, somatic education, Feldenkrais method, neuroplasticity, neurophysiological treatment modalities, mindfulness in psychotherapy, neuronal connectivity, modern atachment theory, embodied brain, body image, self integration, neuro-cognitive retraining, trauma treatment, eating disorder recovery "It is around the concept of the core self that psychology crosses paths with the brain and body" [1].© 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Eating disorders in the "Era of the Brain"Eating disorders (EDs) are bio-psychosocial disorders, their origins and functional pathology based in genetics and brain structure. In the year 2006, by declaring anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) to be disorders of the brain, Thomas Insel, of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), changed the face of ED treatment forever. "There is good reason to think that the prefrontal cortex is the brain center for some eating disorders, obsessions, addictive disorders, and alterations of body image" [2]. Studies show "substantial evidence that individuals who exhibit (ED) pathology are "wired" diferently, …creating the need to deine diagnosis by aberrations in brain circuitry and physiology, and then provide treatments aimed at correcting or ameliorating the aberrant circuitr...