Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Neuroimage Clin. 2021;30:102671. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102671. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
Previous neuroimaging research of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa has mainly focused on clinical patients, indicating the crucial role of intrinsic connectivity networks involved in aberrant behavioral control (i.e., executive control network), reward reactivity (i.e., basal ganglia network), and excessive self-focused and body-focused ruminations (i.e., default mode network) in the onset and maintenance of eating disturbances. However, examinations of large-scale resting-state networks that support the role of cognitive control, reward sensitivity, and self-directed thinking in disordered eating have rarely involved non-clinical samples from the general population. This study, involving a total of 693 healthy young adults (68.69% females; mean age, 18.37 years), investigated these issues by using pre-defined functional regions of interest from the executive control network, basal ganglia network, default mode network, and a seed-based region of interest-to-region of interest approach. After statistically controlling for differences in age, sex, body mass index, and head motion, we observed significant associations of higher levels of eating disorder symptoms, especially bulimia-type eating (i.e., binge eating and a combination of binge eating and compensatory behaviors, such as purging via self-induced vomiting or laxative use, and compulsive exercise), with weaker intra-network and inter-network functional synchrony. These results remained significant after excluding underweight, overweight, and obese participants. These findings suggest that these neural circuits may play a key role in the symptoms of disordered eating in healthy adults. They further reveal that the less efficient information exchange within and between intrinsic networks associated with self-referential thinking, inhibitory control, and reward sensitivity are strongly related to eating disorder symptoms.
先前有关厌食症和贪食症等进食障碍的神经影像学研究主要集中在临床患者上，表明涉及异常行为控制（即执行控制网络）、奖励反应（即基底神经节网络）和过度自我关注和身体关注的反刍（即默认模式网络）的内在连通性网络在进食障碍的发生和维持中起着至关重要的作用。然而，很少有涉及来自普通人群的非临床样本的大型静息态网络研究来检验认知控制、奖励敏感性和自我导向思维在饮食障碍中的作用。本研究共纳入 693 名健康年轻成年人（68.69%为女性；平均年龄 18.37 岁），使用来自执行控制网络、基底神经节网络、默认模式网络的预定义功能区域以及基于种子的区域到区域的方法来研究这些问题。在统计控制了年龄、性别、体重指数和头部运动的差异后，我们观察到进食障碍症状（尤其是贪食型进食障碍，即暴食和暴食与补偿行为的结合，如自我诱导呕吐或使用泻药，以及强迫性运动）的严重程度与内在网络和网络间功能同步性降低之间存在显著关联。这些结果在排除体重过轻、超重和肥胖参与者后仍然显著。这些发现表明，这些神经回路可能在健康成年人的饮食障碍症状中起着关键作用。它们进一步表明，与自我参照思维、抑制控制和奖励敏感性相关的内在网络内和网络间的信息交换效率较低，与饮食障碍症状密切相关。
