Nonvisual multisensory impairment of body perception in anorexia nervosa: a systematic review of neuropsychological studies

Behavioral Bias for Food Reflected in Hand Movements: A Preliminary Study with Healthy Subjects

Palatable food induces general approach tendencies when compared to nonfood stimuli. For eating disorders, the modification of an attention bias toward food was proposed as a treatment option. Similar approaches have been efficient for other psychiatric conditions and, recently, successfully incorporated approach motivation. The direct impact of attentional biases on spontaneous natural behavior has hardly been investigated so far, although actions may serve as an intervention target, especially seeing the recent advances in the field of embodied cognition. In this study, we addressed the interplay of motor action execution and cognition when interacting with food objects. In a Virtual Reality (VR) setting, healthy participants repeatedly grasped or warded high-calorie food or hand-affordant ball objects using their own dominant hand. This novel experimental paradigm revealed an attention-like bias in hand-based actions: 3D objects of food were collected faster than ball objects, and this difference correlated positively with both individual body mass index and diet-related attitudes. The behavioral bias for food in hand movements complements several recent experimental and neurophysiological findings. Implications for the use of VR in the treatment of eating-related health problems are discussed.

Future Directions: How Virtual Reality Can Further Improve the Assessment and Treatment of Eating Disorders and Obesity

Transdisciplinary efforts for further elucidating the etiology of eating and weight disorders and improving the effectiveness of the available evidence-based interventions are imperative at this time. Recent studies indicate that computer-generated graphic environments-virtual reality (VR)-can integrate and extend existing treatments for eating and weight disorders (EWDs). Future possibilities for VR to improve actual approaches include its use for altering in real time the experience of the body (embodiment) and as a cue exposure tool for reducing food craving.

Altered resting state functional connectivity of anterior cingulate cortex in drug naïve adolescents at the earliest stages of anorexia nervosa

Previous Resting-State Functional Connectivity (RSFC) studies have shown several functional alterations in adults with or recovered from long Anorexia Nervosa (AN). The aim of this paper was to investigate whole brain RSFC in adolescents with AN in the earliest stages, less than 6 months, of the disorder. Sixteen drug-naïve outpatient female adolescents with AN-restrictive type (AN-r) (mean age: 15,8; SD 1,7) were compared to 16 age-matched healthy female (mean age: 16,3; SD 1,4). Relevant resting state networks (RSNs) were identified using independent component analysis (ICA) from functional magnetic resonance imaging data; a dual regression technique was used to detect between-group differences in the RSNs. Between-group differences of the functional connectivity maps were found in the executive control network (ECN). Particularly, decreased temporal correlation was observed in AN-r patients relative to healthy controls between the ECN functional connectivity maps and the anterior cingulate cortex (p < 0.05 corrected). Our results in AN adolescents may represent an early trait-related biomarker of the disease. Considering that the above mentioned network and its area are mainly involved in cognitive control and emotional processing, our findings could explain the impaired cognitive flexibility in relation to body image and appetite in AN patients.