gms | German Medical Science

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

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Essstörungen e.V.

03.03. - 05.03.2016, Essen

Neural signature of behavioral inhibition in bulimia nervosa

Meeting Abstract

  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Hans-Christoph Friederich - Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Deutschland
  • author Mandy Skunde - Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Deutschland
  • author Joe Simon - Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Deutschland
  • Sabine Herpertz - Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Deutschland
  • Martin Bendszus - Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Deutschland
  • Wolfgang Herzog - Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Deutschland

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Essstörungen e.V. (DGESS). 5. Wissenschaftlicher Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Essstörungen. Essen, 03.-05.03.2016. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2016. Doc16dgess048

doi: 10.3205/16dgess048, urn:nbn:de:0183-16dgess0487

Published: February 18, 2016

© 2016 Friederich et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.


Outline

Text

Background: Impaired inhibitory control is considered a behavioral phenotype in patients with bulimia nervosa (BN). However, the underlying neural correlates of impaired general and food-specific behavioral inhibition are largely unknown. Therefore, this study investigated brain activation during the performance of behavioral inhibition to general and food-related stimuli in adult BN-patients.

Methods: Twenty-eight women with BN and twenty-nine healthy control women underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a general and a food-specific Nogo task.

Results: On a behavioral level, BN-patients showed an impaired behavioral inhibition to general but not food-specific stimuli. On a neuronal level, significant group differences to general Nogo stimuli were observed in BN-patients with high symptom severity: compared to healthy controls, women with BN showed reduced activation in the right sensorimotor area (postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus) and right dorsal striatum (caudate nucleus, putamen).

Conclusions: The findings suggest that diminished fronto-striatal brain activation in BN-patients contribute to the severity of binge eating symptoms. The present study does not support greater behavioral and neural impairments to food-specific behavioral inhibition in BN-patients.