Self-Regulatory Control and Habit Learning in Adolescents with Bulimia Nervosa

描述（由申请人提供）：加深我们对这些系统异常的了解可能会揭示儿童和青少年因冲动和习惯性行为而困扰的疾病的病理生理学和发病机制。该奖项支持Rachel Marsh博士的职业发展和她的研究计划，以研究神经性贪食症（BN）青少年的自我调节控制过程和习惯学习。职业发展活动建立在Marsh博士在发展和实验心理学方面的背景之上，并利用哥伦比亚大学的资源，使她能够实现成为儿童精神病理学独立研究者的长期目标。Marsh博士建议使用功能磁共振成像来识别BN青少年的额纹状体回路功能障碍，这是自我调节控制的主要介质，可以预测这种疾病的存在或持续存在。拟议的研究还将有助于定义基底神经节内习惯学习系统的功能特征，这些功能特征可能在BN青少年中异常，并有助于他们习惯性的暴食和清除行为。前纹状体系统的紊乱可能会释放潜在的脆弱性，从监管控制发展BN，有助于表达这些习惯性行为。这项研究的结果将对了解BN的发展和治疗具有广泛的重要性，并有助于确定自我调节控制和习惯学习系统在起源于童年的其他病理条件中的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Advancing our understanding of abnormalities in these systems may shed light on the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of disorders in which children and adolescents are plagued by the presence of impulsive and habitual behaviors. This award supports the career development of Dr. Rachel Marsh and her research plan to study self-regulatory control processes and habit learning in adolescents with Bulimia Nervosa (BN). The career development activities build on Dr. Marsh's background in developmental and experimental psychology and capitalize on the resources at Columbia University to allow her to achieve her long-term goal of becoming an independent investigator of childhood psychopathologies. Dr. Marsh proposes to use fMRI to identify functional impairments of frontostriatal circuitry, the primary mediator of self-regulatory control, in adolescents with BN that may predict the presence or perpetuation of the disorder. The proposed research will also help to define the functional characteristics of habit-learning systems within the basal ganglia that may be abnormal in adolescents with BN and contribute to their habitual binging and purging behaviors. Disturbances in frontstriatal systems may release the underlying vulnerabilities to develop BN from regulatory control, contributing to the expression of these habitual behaviors. Findings from this study will have wide-ranging importance for the understanding of the development and treatment of BN and help to define the role of self-regulatory control and habit-learning systems in other pathological conditions that originate in childhood.