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

描述（由申请人提供）：推进我们对这些系统异常的理解可能会揭示儿童和青少年受到冲动和习惯行为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，研究青少年神经性贪食症（BN）的自我调节控制过程和习惯学习。职业发展活动建立在马什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调查员的长期目标。Marsh博士建议使用fMRI来识别青少年BN患者额纹状体回路的功能损伤，这是自我调节控制的主要媒介，可以预测该疾病的存在或持续存在。该研究还将有助于确定基底神经节内的习惯学习系统的功能特征，这些特征可能在BN青少年中异常，并有助于他们的习惯性暴食和清除行为。额纹状体系统的紊乱可能会释放潜在的脆弱性，使其从调节控制中发展为BN，从而促进这些习惯性行为的表达。这项研究的发现将对理解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儿童期其他病理条件下的作用。

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.