Neurobiology of Social Thinking in Anorexia

描述（由申请人提供）：此K-23辅导以患者为导向的职业发展奖申请要求支持为申请人提供培训，使其成为人类认知神经科学的神经影像学研究员，专门了解疾病，神经性厌食症，并执行一项研究项目，该项目将调查社会思维的神经相关性与神经性厌食症的病理学之间的联系。在住院医师期间，申请人作为皮质神经生理学家的研究背景使她开始一个利用功能性神经成像任务治疗进食障碍的试点项目。该项目确定了神经性厌食症患者在恢复过程中思考自我认同和理解他人关系时具有不同激活的三个皮层区域。拟议的项目现在将检查这些区域的激活：扣带回，楔前叶和颞顶交界处在三个不同的受试者组：健康对照组，目前患病的神经性厌食症患者和完全康复的神经性厌食症患者。这些比较将提高我们对神经性厌食症患者的疾病和恢复相关的皮质变化的理解。除了神经影像学数据外，每位参与者还将完成评估，提供精神病和病史，与fMRI任务相关的心理量表和神经认知测量。功能性磁共振成像任务对这些神经区域的激活也将与评估相关联，以区分与疾病存在具体相关的皮层差异和与其他心理测量相关的差异，并可能反映神经性厌食症患者的特征。这些研究将使申请人能够满足她的直接职业目标：发展成为神经性厌食症的独立翻译神经影像学研究人员。通过这项研究和培训，申请人将准备实现她的长期职业目标，成为一名独立的研究人员，研究神经性厌食症的发展和解决中生物机制和心理功能之间的关系。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This K-23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Career Development Award application requests support to provide training for the applicant to become a neuroimaging researcher in human cognitive neuroscience specializing in understanding the illness, anorexia nervosa and to perform a research project that will investigate the linkages between neural correlates of social thinking and the pathology of anorexia nervosa. During residency, the applicant's research background as a cortical neurophysiologist led her to begin a pilot project utilizing functional neuroimaging tasks in eating disorders. This project identified three cortical regions with different activation in thinking about one's own self-identity and understanding relationships between others in patients in the process of recovering from anorexia nervosa. The proposed project will now examine the activation of these regions: the cingulate, the precuneus, and the temporoparietal junction in three different subject groups: healthy controls, currently ill anorexia nervosa patients, and fully recovered anorexia nervosa patients. These comparisons will improve our understanding of cortical changes associated with illness and recovery in anorexia nervosa. In addition to the neuroimaging data, each participant will complete assessments providing psychiatric and medical history, psychological scales related to the fMRI tasks, and neurocognitive measures. Activation of these neural regions by the fMRI tasks will also be correlated with the assessments to distinguish between cortical differences that relate specifically to the presence of the illness and differences that relate to other psychological measures and may reflect a trait of patients that have anorexia nervosa. These studies will allow the applicant to meet her immediate career goal: development as an independent translational neuroimaging researcher in anorexia nervosa. With this study and training, the applicant will be prepared to meet her long-term career goal of becoming an independent investigator examining the relationship between biological mechanisms and psychological function in both the development and resolution of anorexia nervosa.