Huang Kaixin, Foldi Claire J
Department of Physiology, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Australia.
Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Clayton 3800, Australia.
J Clin Med. 2022 May 5;11(9):2594. doi: 10.3390/jcm11092594.
Deficits in cognitive flexibility are consistently seen in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN). This type of cognitive impairment is thought to be associated with the persistence of AN because it leads to deeply ingrained patterns of thought and behaviour that are highly resistant to change. Neurobiological drivers of cognitive inflexibility have some commonalities with the abnormal brain functional outcomes described in patients with AN, including disrupted prefrontal cortical function, and dysregulated dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitter systems. The activity-based anorexia (ABA) model recapitulates the key features of AN in human patients, including rapid weight loss caused by self-starvation and hyperactivity, supporting its application in investigating the cognitive and neurobiological causes of pathological weight loss. The aim of this review is to describe the relationship between AN, neural function and cognitive flexibility in human patients, and to highlight how new techniques in behavioural neuroscience can improve the utility of animal models of AN to inform the development of novel therapeutics.
神经性厌食症（AN）患者中始终存在认知灵活性缺陷。这种认知障碍被认为与AN的持续存在有关，因为它会导致根深蒂固的思维和行为模式，这些模式极难改变。认知灵活性的神经生物学驱动因素与AN患者中描述的异常脑功能结果有一些共同之处，包括前额叶皮质功能紊乱以及多巴胺和血清素神经递质系统失调。基于活动的厌食症（ABA）模型概括了人类患者AN的关键特征，包括自我饥饿和多动导致的快速体重减轻，这支持了其在研究病理性体重减轻的认知和神经生物学原因方面的应用。本综述的目的是描述人类患者中AN、神经功能和认知灵活性之间的关系，并强调行为神经科学中的新技术如何提高AN动物模型的效用，以为新型治疗方法的开发提供信息。
