Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder in which the person ingests large amounts of food in what we call ‘binges’, which are followed by a strong feeling of guilt that leads them to vomit or take laxatives with the intention of eliminating them. eaten food. At the base of the disorder, the extreme fear of gaining weight, among other things.
Among the symptoms of bulimia nervosa, cognitive failures have been described, although there is still not much knowledge about how the brain of these patients works in relation to these alterations in capacities such as attention . Several studies have found that people with this disorder perform worse than healthy people in attentional tasks, but recent research has described in more detail how the brain networks that process attention work in these patients. For this they had the collaboration of 20 participants with bulimia nervosa and 20 healthy participants, who performed an attention task while taking images of their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging .
The results of the study, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE (2016), shed light on the three care networks described by Michael Posner: the alert network, the care orientation network and the executive care network (in charge of of the most complex care processes).
The authors found greater activation in parietal and occipital areas, as well as less deactivation of the default neural network when alerting tasks were performed . This profile, according to the authors, could explain the constant preoccupation with food or the body .
They also found that during executive attention and attention orientation tasks there was less activation of the anterior cingulate, the temporo-parietal junction, and the parahippocampal zone . In this case, this result could be related to a higher probability of attentional failures and impulsive behaviors, or to a worse emotional regulation .
Of course, these data are very interesting and open other questions regarding treatment. Would it be possible to improve the symptoms of bulimia nervosa if patients underwent attention-focused cognitive training? Hopefully new experiments will be carried out on this possibility soon and new ways will be found to help those affected.
Marisa Fernández Sánchez, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
