Visual and tactile body representation in body dysmorphic disorder

• Applicant: Dr. Anne Möllmann
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463145403

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental disorder assigned to the obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, are preoccupied with certain features of their physical appearance and perceive them as unattractive or ugly. These perceived defects are not or only slightly noticeable to other people. This discrepancy suggests that individuals with BDD experience a distorted mental representation of certain body parts. Body representations can be differentiated according to the following dimensions: 1) aspect (body image vs. body schema), 2) sensory modality (e.g., visual vs. tactile), and 3) stability (long-term vs. short-term). Well-understood is that individuals with BDD experience negative feelings and attitudes towards their own appearance and thus a distortion of the cognitive-affective body image. Little is known about other body representations in BDD, such as the perceptual body image and the body schema. Accordingly, psychotherapy of BDD focuses on these cognitive-affective processes. However, remission rates of less than 40% show the need for improvements. Further developments of treatment options, such as web-/app-based treatment or cognitive bias modification, also focus on the cognitive-affective body image, without improving remission rates so far. Thus, focusing on other potentially distorted body representations that might contribute to maintain BDD, offers the chance of treatment optimization.Thus, in the project applied for, individuals with BDD are to be assessed regarding their perceptual body image, in terms of a distorted size estimations of body parts, and the body schema (i.e. representations that enable movements and action) – based on both visual and tactile information. We aim to experimentally assess these body representations. Specifically, we aim to investigate, 1) which of the four forms of body representations (visual and tactile body image, visual and tactile body schema) are distorted, 2) whether potential distortions depend on the relevance of the body part for the dysmorphic symptoms, and 3) whether individuals with BDD differ from mentally healthy individuals and also from individuals with a high level of body dissatisfaction with regard to these body representations.To this end, we plan to compare facial and non-facial regions for each representation. The tasks to assess the visual and tactile body image are established for whole body representations. We adapted the tasks to assess facial body image. The visual and tactile representations of the face in the body schema are to be assessed with (grasping) movement tasks. The results should provide empirically and experimentally derived starting points for the optimization of BDD treatment, such as the potential relevance of including other sensory modalities (here tactile) or aspects of body representations (e.g., body schema) in interventions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Privatdozent Dr. Arvid Herwig