Can you imagine what would happen if when you looked at yourself in the mirror every morning what you saw before you was a disfigured person that generates a huge rejection? This is what happens to patients who suffer abody dysmorphic disorder or dysmorphophobia, a disease that affects one in every hundred people and is characterized by aexcessive preoccupation with any real or imagined body imperfectionbut almost imperceptible. By studying the activity of the brain of these subjects, UCLA scientists have verified that the problem lies in a malfunction in the areas that are responsible for processing visual stimuli, especially the image of their own face. Details are published in the magazineArchives of General Psychiatry.
“People with dysmorphobia are anxious and depressed,” explains Jamie Feusner, lead author of the study. “They obsess over tiny flaws on their face and body.or that no one else notices. “As a consequence, many give up going out of the house, cover their face or body and even undergo plastic surgery.” And half of the subjects have been hospitalized at some time for attempted suicide. Feusner qualifies.
Analyzing the brains of these patients and of several healthy subjects withfunctional magnetic resonance imagingWhile viewing photos of faces, Feusner and his colleagues found that when looking at their own faces, people with dysmorphobia have unusual activity in regions that process visual information. There are also failures in areas of the frontal cortex that are responsible for controlling behavior and maintaining emotional flexibility in response to different situations.
As the researchers conclude, everything indicates that this disease is related to a severe difficulty in processing information about thehuman faces. Instead of seeing them as a whole, patients only see details, and believe that everyone will perceive those imperfections that their brain magnifies to the point of incapacitating them for normal life.
