Binge eating is a distressing, transdiagnostic eating disorder symptom associated with impulsivity, particularly in negative mood states. Neuroimaging studies of bulimia nervosa (BN) report reduced activity in frontostriatal regions implicated in self-regulatory control, and an influential theory posits that binge eating results from self-regulation failures under stress. However, there is no direct evidence that psychological stress impairs self-regulation in binge-eating disorders, or that any such self-regulatory deficits generalize to binge eating in underweight individuals (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) are complex psychiatric conditions, in which both psychological and metabolic factors have been implicated. Critically, the experience of stress can precipitate loss-of-control eating in both conditions, suggesting an interplay between mental state and metabolic signaling. However, associations between psychological states, symptoms and metabolic processes in AN and BN have not been examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Grey matter and other structural brain abnormalities are consistently reported in first-onset schizophrenia, but less is known about the extent of neuroanatomical changes in first-onset affective psychosis.
Aims: To determine which brain abnormalities are specific to (a) schizophrenia and (b) affective psychosis.
Method: We obtained dual-echo (proton density/T2-weighted) magnetic resonance images and carried out voxel-based analysis on the images of 73 patients with first-episode psychosis (schizophrenia n=44, affective psychosis n=29) and 58 healthy controls.
Background: Lack of insight is frequently observed in schizophrenia. Relationships have been noted between poor insight, clinical symptoms and cognitive impairments but the findings are inconsistent. There have been some recent attempts to relate poor insight to neuro-anatomical measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in patients with schizophrenia have shown reliable deficits in global tissue volume as well as some regionally specific changes, particularly in the temporal and frontal lobes. Recent technical advances have enabled automated voxel-wise analyses, which have the advantage of facilitating whole brain coverage without the restrictions of anatomically defined regions of interest and imperfect rater reliability. We used such a method to estimate voxel composition from segmentation of bivariate, dual-echo spin-echo data in 72 men with schizophrenia.
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