The Neurobiology of Eating Disorders.

Eating disorders are severe psychiatric illnesses with a typical age of onset in adolescence. Brain research in youth and young adults may help us identify specific neurobiology that contributes to onset and maintenance of those disorders. This article provides a state-of-the-art review of our current understanding of the neurobiology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Motivation to eat and not to eat - The psycho-biological conflict in anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is a severe psychiatric illness with high mortality. Brain imaging research has indicated altered reward circuits in the disorder. Here we propose a disease model for anorexia nervosa, supported by recent studies, that integrates psychological and biological factors.

Neural correlates of taste reward value across eating disorders.

Individuals with eating disorders (ED) make extreme food choices, raising the possibility of altered food-value computation. We utilized an associative taste reward learning paradigm to test whether value signaling differs between participants with EDs vs. healthy controls (HC).

Localized brain volume and white matter integrity alterations in adolescent anorexia nervosa.

Objective: The neurobiological underpinnings of anorexia nervosa (AN) are poorly understood. In this study, we tested whether brain gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) in adolescents with AN would show alterations comparable to those in adults.

Method: We used magnetic resonance imaging to study GM and WM volume, and diffusion tensor imaging to assess fractional anisotropy for WM integrity in 19 adolescents with AN and 22 controls.