Altered Neural Circuitry May Lead To Anorexia And Bulimia
Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are psychological disorders characterized by extreme eating behavior and distorted body image – both have few proven effective treatments.A new paper suggests that the altered function of neural circuitry contributes to restricted eating in anorexia and overeating in bulimia. The study used functional MRI to test this neurocircuitry by measuring the brain response to sweet tastes in 28 women who had recovered from either anorexia or bulimia.Relative to a cohort of 14 women who had never suffered from either disorder, those recovered from anorexia had significantly diminished, and those recovered from bulimia, significantly elevated responses to the taste of sucrose in the right anterior insula. read more