Brain Changes Identified in Anorexia Nervosa and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Partially overlapping brain function patterns have been observed in people with anorexia nervosa and those with body dysmorphic disorder. The abnormalities in the brain function are related to the severity of symptoms in both the disorders.

Body dysmorphia is a psychiatric condition that is characterized by obsessions with a particular body type or a perceived flaw. Anorexia nervosa causes a person to have intense fear about weight gain, causing them to eat very little. In addition, they have a distorted perception of body image.

‘Psychiatric disorders like anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia have a neurological basis, which is indicated via brain activity and connectivity changes. The findings will help in the development of new treatments for these conditions.’

The UCLA study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Imaging and Behavior. The findings will help develop new treatment methods.

"These are brain abnormalities, and how we treat those brain abnormalities could be with psychotherapy or psychiatric medications, but brain changes need to happen in order to address these disorders,"says Dr. Wesley Kerr, a neurology resident and biostatistics researcher at UCLA.

For the study, 64 female participants were recruited, Among them, 20 had anorexia nervosa, 23 with body dysmorphic disorder, and 21 were healthy controls. They were then shown images of male and female bodies while their brain activity was observed using an MRI. The women were asked to perform a 'matching task' while inside the MRI scanner.

Three types of images were used, normal photos, "low spatial frequency" (LSF) images, in which the details are blurred out, and "high spatial frequency" (HSF) images, in which the edges and details were accentuated.

Functional MRI helps detect blood flow within the brain. This allows in detecting the active brain parts while doing various tasks. It can also be used to identify the brain regions that are connected.

On observation, it was noted that people with anorexia nervosa and BDD had abnormal patterns of activity and connectivity in visual and parietal brain networks. The activity differed in both the disorders while the abnormalities in connectivity were similar.

The more severe the symptoms, the more pronounced were the pattern of brain activity and connectivity.

The findings will help understand the underlying neurobiology that leads to the characteristic body image distortions in both cases.

"This gives us a clearer picture of a neurological basis for what is one disorder, what is the other, and what characteristics they share," said Dr. Jamie Feusner, senior author and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

Source: Medindia