Social aspects of restrictive eating behavior in anorexia nervosa
Final Report Abstract
The aim of the planned project was to increase the understanding how social aspects might be involved in food-restrictive behavior in anorexia nervosa (AN). To this end, AN patients and healthy controls (HC) perform two experimental paradigms during functional magnetic resonance imaging. In the first paradigm, neural responses to anticipated food and non-food rewards are examined and personal rewards (experience of own win) are contrasted to vicarious rewards (experience of others’ wins). I hypothesized that the AN group differs in the activity of the Nucleus Accumbens – a central structure in the brain’s reward system – during the anticipation of rewards and in behavioral measures of motivation (reaction times and post-scan ratings) from the control group depending on the reward type and the reward receiver. In the second paradigm, neural activations related to social eating situations are investigated, contrasting situations in which participants imagine eating to situations in which only other persons are eating. I expected to find find an interaction effect of group (AN, HC) and type of situation (eating-related, -unrelated) for behavioral ratings and activity in the ventral striatum (as structure of the reward system) and shame-associated networks when considering situations in which the participants imagine to be the protagonist of the situation. In addition, I expected that AN patients and HC show different effects in differentiating between protagonist and observer perspectives. Finally, I hypothesized that eating behavior in a subclinical sample also relates to how pleasant eating in social situations is perceived. With the planned project, I expect to provide important information about mechanisms that underlie restrictive eating behavior in AN that might help to develop more effective treatment strategies. Unfortunately, the data collection has not yet been completed and will continue after the funding period. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project had to be interrupted for an extended period of time. However, we were able to use data collected before the pandemic from the pilot study to investigate the change in perception of social situations (without a focus on food) as a result of the pandemic. Here, we were able to show that both the risk associated with a specific situation and the individual´s general perception of the current risk of infection were related to changes in comfort in social situations from before to during the pandemic.
Publications
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Perceived Risk of Infection Linked to Changes in Comfort in Social Situations From Before to During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12.
Stierand, Janine; Luebber, Finn; Krach, Sören; Paulus, Frieder Michel & Rademacher, Lena
