Recovery from anorexia nervosa includes neural compensation for negative body image.

Objective: To examine whether frontal lobe mediated regulation of emotion permits women to recover from anorexia nervosa (AN).

Method: Brain activity associated with the disruption of working memory by images of bodies was examined in women who had recovered from AN and in control women.

Results: Negatively rated images were more disruptive to working memory than neutral or positively rated images in both groups; however, amygdala and fusiform activation were greater in women who had recovered from AN than in controls when viewing images of bodies during the working memory task.

Assessment of body image in younger and older women.

Body image was compared in younger versus older women using questionnaires and women's responses to fatter and thinner images of their own bodies versus responses to line drawings of bodies in the Figure Ratings Scale. We found that younger and older women have similar body dissatisfaction but that younger women have a higher drive for thinness and experience more societal influence on their body image. Using images of one's own body versus line drawings did not result in different body dissatisfaction in younger versus older women.

More is less: emotion induced prefrontal cortex activity habituates in aging.

Several recent studies have documented age-related changes in brain activity--less amygdala activity and higher prefrontal activity in response to emotional stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined whether aging also affects the maintenance of activity to emotional stimuli and whether maintenance differs by the valence (negative, neutral and positive) of the pictures. Younger participants had a larger volume of activity in the amygdala but less in the prefrontal cortex than the old.