Abstract
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe mental illness characterized by problems with self-perception. Whole-brain neural activations in healthy women, women with AN and women in long-term weight recovery following AN were compared using two functional magnetic resonance imaging tasks probing different aspects of self-perception. The Social Identity-V2 task involved consideration about oneself and others using socially descriptive adjectives. Both the ill and weight-recovered women with AN engaged medial prefrontal cortex less than healthy women for self-relevant cognitions, a potential biological trait difference. Weight-recovered women also activated the inferior frontal gyri and dorsal anterior cingulate more for direct self-evaluations than for reflected self-evaluations, unlike both other groups, suggesting that recovery may include compensatory neural changes related to social perspectives. The Faces task compared viewing oneself to a stranger. Participants with AN showed elevated activity in the bilateral fusiform gyri for self-images, unlike the weight-recovered and healthy women, suggesting cognitive distortions about physical appearance are a state rather than trait problem in this disease. Because both ill and recovered women showed neural differences related to social self-perception, but only recovered women differed when considering social perspectives, these neurocognitive targets may be particularly important for treatment.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1823-1831 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 1 2016 |
Keywords
- Eating disorders
- FMRI
- Medial prefrontal cortex
- Psychiatry
- Self-reflection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience