Article
Neural signature of behavioral inhibition in bulimia nervosa
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Published: | February 18, 2016 |
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Outline
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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.