Armon Daphna Bardin, Bick Atira, Florentin Sharon, Laufer Sofia, Barkai Gabriel, Bachar Eytan, Hendler Talma, Bonne Omer, Keller Shikma
Psychiatry Department, Hadassah Medical Center, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Neurology Department, Hadassah Medical Center, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Mar 2;14:1022537. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1022537. eCollection 2023.
Episodes of eating great quantities of extremely sweet and often aversive tasting food are a hallmark of bulimia nervosa. This unique eating pattern led researchers to seek and find differences in taste perception between patients and healthy control subjects. However, it is currently not known if these originate from central or peripheral impairment in the taste perception system. In this cross sectional study, we compare brain response to sweet and sour stimuli in 5 bulimic and 8 healthy women using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Sweet, sour and neutral (colorless and odorless) taste solutions were presented to subjects while undergoing fMRI scanning. Data were analyzed using a block design paradigm.
Between-group differences in brain activation in response to both sweet and sour tastes were found in 11 brain regions, including operculum, anterior cingulate cortex, midbrain, and cerebellum. These are all considered central to perception and processing of taste.
Our data propose that sweet and sour tastes may have reward or aversion eliciting attributes in patients suffering from bulimia nervosa not found in healthy subjects, suggesting that alteration in taste processing may be a core dysfunction in bulimia nervosa (BN).
大量食用极甜且通常味道不佳的食物是神经性贪食症的一个标志。这种独特的饮食模式促使研究人员去寻找并发现患者与健康对照者在味觉感知上的差异。然而，目前尚不清楚这些差异是源于味觉感知系统的中枢还是外周损伤。在这项横断面研究中，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）比较了5名神经性贪食症女性和8名健康女性对甜味和酸味刺激的大脑反应。
在进行fMRI扫描时，向受试者呈现甜味、酸味和中性（无色无味）味觉溶液。数据采用组块设计范式进行分析。
在11个脑区发现了两组在对甜味和酸味反应时大脑激活的组间差异，这些脑区包括岛盖、前扣带回皮质、中脑和小脑。这些脑区都被认为是味觉感知和处理的中枢。
我们的数据表明，甜味和酸味在神经性贪食症患者中可能具有在健康受试者中未发现的奖励或厌恶诱发属性，这表明味觉处理的改变可能是神经性贪食症（BN）的核心功能障碍。
