Neural mechanisms of biased attention towards disorder-salient stimuli in bulimia nervosa

神经性贪食症患者对异常-显著性刺激的偏向注意的神经机制 项目总结/摘要 饮食失调，如神经性贪食症（BN）的特点是异常的饮食行为，被认为是 通过对体重、形状和食物的高估和关注来促进和维持。它有 有人认为，对身体形象的过度关注，以及影响身体形象的因素（例如，食品和 进食），可能通过指导有限的认知功能来维持紊乱的进食行为和BN的其他症状。 资源，从而干扰知觉和认知任务，并扭曲 环境是如何被个人感知和解释的。然而， 注意参与，注意偏向的特异性，以障碍突出的刺激，和潜在的神经 对可能导致这些问题的机制仍然知之甚少。尽管近年来见证了 与饮食失调有关的基本认知和神经科学研究显著增加， 承认该领域在理解精神疾病的进展方面落后于其他精神疾病， 大脑回路和这种使人衰弱的精神疾病的病理生理学。获得这种理解是 如果要实现针对BN的精细治疗方式的承诺，这一点至关重要。拟议项目将 通过使用创新的行为和电生理学方法来测量 注意力偏向于障碍-突出刺激，最先进的成像方法来评估大脑功能 连通性和基于相关性的统计方法来检查两者之间的关系。这 将提供一种趋同的方法，测试有关核心过程的具体假设， 在BN中中断。关于BN中注意力偏差的神经基础的基本知识可以提供对 大量精神和神经疾病的性质，以适应不良的关注为特征 与疾病相关的刺激，如焦虑，情绪和物质使用障碍。此外，理解 注意偏差及其神经基础可以促进新的行为和大脑的发展。 有效治疗这些使人衰弱的病症的基于刺激的方法。

Neural mechanisms of biased attention towards disorder-salient stimuli in bulimia nervosa PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa (BN) are characterized by aberrant eating behaviors that are thought to be promoted and maintained by an overvaluation of and preoccupation with weight, shape, and food. It has been suggested that excessive concern with body image, and factors that affect body image (e.g., food and eating), may maintain disordered eating behavior and other symptoms of BN by directing limited cognitive resources towards disorder-salient stimuli, thereby interfering with perceptual and cognitive tasks and distorting how the environment is perceived and interpreted by the individual. However, the temporal dynamics of attentional engagement, the specificity of attention biases to disorder-salient stimuli, and the underlying neural mechanisms that may give rise to them are still poorly understood. Although recent years have witnessed a marked increase in basic cognitive and neuroscience research related to eating disorders, it is generally acknowledged that the field lags behind other psychiatric disorders in terms of progress in understanding the brain circuits and pathophysiology of this debilitating form of mental illness. Gaining this understanding is critical if the promise of refined treatment modalities targeting BN is to be realized. The proposed project will contribute to this endeavor by using innovative behavioral and electrophysiological methods to measure attention biases towards disorder-salient stimuli, state-of-the-art imaging methods to assess brain functional connectivity, and correlation-based statistical approaches to examine the relationship between the two. This will provide a convergent approach that tests specific hypotheses regarding core processes that may be disrupted in BN. Basic knowledge about the neural basis of attention biases in BN can provide insights into the nature of a large number of psychiatric and neurological disorders that feature maladaptive preoccupations with disorder-relevant stimuli, such as anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders. Moreover, understanding attention biases and their neural bases can contribute to the development of novel behavioral and brain stimulation-based methods of effectively treating these debilitating conditions.