Department of Psychological Medicine, Section of Eating Disorders Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK.
BMC Psychiatry. 2013 Nov 15;13:302. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-13-302.
Research into the neural correlates of bulimia nervosa (BN) psychopathology remains limited.
In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 21 BN patients and 23 healthy controls (HCs) completed two paradigms: (1) processing of visual food stimuli and (2) comparing their own appearance with that of slim women. Participants also rated food craving and anxiety levels.
Brain activation patterns in response to food cues did not differ between women with and without BN. However, when evaluating themselves against images of slim women, BN patients engaged the insula more and the fusiform gyrus less, compared to HCs, suggesting increased self-focus among women with BN whilst comparing themselves to a 'slim ideal'. In these BN patients, exposure to food and body image stimuli increased self-reported levels of anxiety, but not craving.
Our findings suggest that women with BN differ from HCs in the way they process body image, but not in the way they process food stimuli.
研究神经性贪食症（BN）精神病理学的神经相关性仍然有限。
在这项功能磁共振成像研究中，21 名 BN 患者和 23 名健康对照者（HCs）完成了两个范式：（1）视觉食物刺激的处理，（2）比较自己的外貌和苗条女性的外貌。参与者还对食物渴望和焦虑水平进行了评分。
对食物线索的反应的大脑激活模式在 BN 患者和无 BN 患者之间没有差异。然而，当 BN 患者将自己与苗条女性的形象进行比较时，与 HCs 相比，BN 患者的岛叶更活跃，梭状回更少，这表明 BN 患者在将自己与“苗条理想”进行比较时，自我关注增加。在这些 BN 患者中，暴露于食物和身体形象刺激会增加自我报告的焦虑水平，但不会增加渴望。
我们的发现表明，BN 患者在处理身体形象的方式上与 HCs 不同，但在处理食物刺激的方式上没有不同。
