gms | German Medical Science

3. Wissenschaftlicher Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Essstörungen e. V. (DGESS)

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Essstörungen e. V.

23.02. - 25.02.2012, Hannover

Reward anticipation in patients with Anorexia nervosa

Meeting Abstract

  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Stefan Ehrlich - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • author Daniel Geisler - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Marion Breier - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Franziska Neidel - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Luisa Flohr - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Johanna Hass - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Johannes Zwipp - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany
  • Veit Rößner - University Hospital C.G. Carus, Dresden University of Technology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dresden, Germany

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Essstörungen e.V. (DGESS). 3. Wissenschaftlicher Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Essstörungen. Hannover, 23.-25.02.2012. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2012. Doc12dgess039

doi: 10.3205/12dgess039, urn:nbn:de:0183-12dgess0397

Veröffentlicht: 8. Februar 2012

© 2012 Ehrlich et al.
Dieser Artikel ist ein Open Access-Artikel und steht unter den Creative Commons Lizenzbedingungen (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.de). Er darf vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden, vorausgesetzt dass Autor und Quelle genannt werden.


Gliederung

Text

Background: Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) have been recently described to not discriminate between reward and punishment at a neural level and to recruit aberrant neural resources when confronted with rewarding food stimuli [1], [2]. However, these data are concerned with the consumptive phase of reward processing. In the present study we focus on reward anticipation in patients with AN.

Material/Methods: Functional MRI was performed to measure mesocorticolimbic activity to stimuli predicting varying degrees of monetary reward, together with behavioral assessment of subsequent motivation to obtain the respective reward on a trial-by-trial basis. The ongoing study includes patients with acute AN (acAN), weight-recovered AN (recAN) and healthy female controls.

Results: Our preliminary data suggest increased reactivity of the mesocorticolimbic system to stimuli predicting relatively low monetary rewards in both groups of AN patients when compared to healthy controls. AN patients subsequently also spent more effort to obtain low monetary reward whereas there are no differences at higher reward levels. This pattern of results was moderated by temperament; the higher patients scored on the persistence subscale of the TCI the less they differentiated between low and high monetary rewards.

Discussion: AN patients show an inflexible pattern of reward anticipation which is characterized by an equally high sensitivity towards low and high secondary and not disorder-related reward-predicting cues. This insensitivity to incentive salience was moderated by temperament and has been previously described as a central mechanism of drug addiction [3].


References

1.
Cowdrey FA, Park RJ, Harmer CJ, McCabe C. Increased neural processing of rewarding and aversive food stimuli in recovered anorexia nervosa. Biol Psychiatry. 2011;70(8):736-43.
2.
Wagner A, Aizenstein H, Venkatraman VK, Fudge J, May JC, Mazurkewicz L, Frank GK, Bailer UF, Fischer L, Nguyen V, Carter C, Putnam K, Kaye WH. Altered reward processing in women recovered from anorexia nervosa. Am J Psychiatry. 2007;164(12):1842-9.
3.
Buhler M, Vollstadt-Klein S, Kobiella A, Budde H, Reed LJ, Braus DF, Buchel C, Smolka, MN. Nicotine dependence is characterized by disordered reward processing in a network driving motivation. Biol Psychiatry. 2010;67:745-752.