Neurocircuit function in eating disorders

Abstract

Anxiety and pathological fear learning may lead to conditioned neural stimulus-response patterns to food stimuli and increased cognitive rigidity, which could account for the phobic avoidance of food intake in patients with acute AN. However, further neurobiological studies are required to investigate pathological fear learning in patients with AN. Patients with BN may binge eat to compensate for a hypo-responsive reward system. The impaired brain activation in the inhibitory control network may facilitate the loss of control over food intake in patients with BN.

Prediction error and somatosensory insula activation in women recovered from anorexia nervosa

“…3 Some studies applied complex taste stimuli, such as chocolate milk, and those results of greater activation in the amygdala in individuals with anorexia nervosa were interpreted as, at least in part, anxiety-related activation. 4 Others used basic taste stimuli, as less complex and less appetitive stimuli may be better suited to identify more basic taste processing as opposed to cognitive and emotional response.…”

Neural signature of food reward processing in bulimic-type eating disorders

“…BED patients exhibit no compensatory behaviors, overweight or obesity in the long term occurs in the majority of cases ( Agh et al, 2015). A common theory that has been put forward to explain the phenomenon of overeating is the 'food addiction model', which suggests that an unbalanced neuronal reward system overrides the homeostatic regulation of food intake (Friederich et al, 2013;Smith and Robbins, 2013). There is evidence from experimental animal research that intermittent availability of sugar leads to deprivation-induced sugar binging that is associated with the sensitization of mesocorticolimbic reward pathways to energydense foods (Corwin et al, 2011).…”

Eating Disorders in Late-life

“…Furthermore, patients with BN presented impaired brain activation in the inhibitory control network during the performance of general response-inhibition tasks. These finding suggest that BN patients may binge to compensate a hypo-responsive reward system; the impaired brain activation in the inhibitory control network, in fact, may facilitate the loss of control over food intake in these patients [26].…”