Division of Psychological and Social Medicine and Developmental Neurosciences, Translational Developmental Neuroscience Section, Technische Universität Dresden, University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Transl Psychiatry. 2021 Oct 16;11(1):532. doi: 10.1038/s41398-021-01630-1.
Anorexia nervosa (AN) has been associated with altered reward processing. We recently reported greater neural response in secondary visual areas when processing visual food stimuli in acutely underweight AN patients (acAN). In order to examine whether the observed alterations are indicative of acute undernutrition or a potential trait marker of AN, we set out to assess neural responses in acAN and in individuals weight-recovered from AN (recAN). FMRI data were collected from a total of 126 female volunteers, 35 acAN, 33 recAN, and 58 age-matched healthy controls (HC) while they viewed streams of food, social and neutral stimuli. A standard general linear model (GLM) was used to interrogate neural responses to the different stimuli in recAN vs. age-matched HC. Moreover, within-subject multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA) in the two matched samples (acAN/HC and recAN/HC) were used to estimate neural representation of food vs. neutral, and social vs. neutral stimuli. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to test associations between the accuracy of the neural representation and treatment outcome. The GLM revealed no group differences between recAN and HC. The MVPAs showed greater classification accuracy of food stimuli in the posterior fusiform gyrus in acAN but not recAN. Classification accuracy was associated with better treatment outcome. Our findings suggest that the neural representation of food stimuli is altered in secondary visual areas in acAN and normalizes with weight recovery. Possibly this altered representation reflects attentional engagement motivating food intake, which may promote the recovery process.
神经性厌食症 (AN) 与奖励加工改变有关。我们最近报道，在急性体重不足的 AN 患者（acAN）处理视觉食物刺激时，次级视觉区域的神经反应更大。为了检查观察到的改变是否表明急性营养不良或 AN 的潜在特征标记，我们着手评估 acAN 和从 AN 中恢复体重的个体（recAN）的神经反应。从总共 126 名女性志愿者中收集了 fMRI 数据，其中 35 名 acAN、33 名 recAN 和 58 名年龄匹配的健康对照组（HC），他们观看了食物、社交和中性刺激的流。使用标准的一般线性模型（GLM）来询问 recAN 与年龄匹配的 HC 之间不同刺激的神经反应。此外，在两个匹配样本（acAN/HC 和 recAN/HC）中进行了多体素模式分析（MVPA），以估计食物与中性、社交与中性刺激的神经表示。进行了多元回归分析，以测试神经表示的准确性与治疗结果之间的关联。GLM 显示 recAN 和 HC 之间没有组间差异。MVPAs 显示，在 acAN 中，后梭状回对食物刺激的分类准确性更高，但在 recAN 中则不然。分类准确性与更好的治疗结果相关。我们的研究结果表明，在 acAN 的次级视觉区域中，食物刺激的神经表示发生改变，并随着体重的恢复而正常化。这种改变的表示可能反映了注意力参与激励食物摄入，这可能促进恢复过程。
