Psychology

Self-Denial, Secrecy and Deliberate Lying in Eating Disorders

Tetyana

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “I’ve already eaten, thanks,” “No thanks, I’m going be eating later,” or “I’d love to, but I’ve got a stomach ache,” when I actually hadn’t eaten, wasn’t going to eat later, and didn’t have a stomach ache. Why did I do that? Did I realize I had, or was developing, an eating disorder? How long did it take for that realization to click? And once it did, did I stop lying to avoid eating with others or did I do it more?

A lot of questions spring up when you start thinking about secrecy, denial, and lying as it related to eating disorders. And answering these questions by having to remember what you thought when you first began to show signs of your eating disorder is hard. It is hard for many reasons, but one reason is that the we feel about … Continue reading →

Endophenotypes and Biomarkers in Eating Disorders: Genetic Underpinnings, Personality Traits, Vulnerabilities – Part 2

Saren 4 Comments

This post continues the discussion of the chapter on eating disorders by Carolina Lopez, Marion Roberts, and Janet Treasure from The Handbook of Neuropsychiatric Biomarkers, Endophenotypes and Genes (2009). Part 1 focused on neurotransmitter biomarkers, and this second part will focus on the neuropsychological biomarkers.

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL BIOMARKERS

Attentional biases

Attentional bias is the tendency for individuals to attend to or be distracted by emotionally relevant stimuli over neutral stimuli. Attentional biases have been observed in several studies:

  • Current AN and BN individuals showed bias towards food, body-related stimuli.
  • Past AN but not past BN showed bias towards body shape concerns.
  • Both current and “long-term recovered” AN showed “abnormally higher activation in the medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices in response to food stimuli using fMRI [brain imaging]” (232)

These biases can be minimal but annoying: waiting in line at the pharmacy, staring into space and finding your focus … Continue reading →

Emotion Recognition and Regulation in Anorexia Nervosa

Tetyana 1 Comment

Should anorexia nervosa (AN) – or subtypes of AN – be classified as part of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD)? That’s a question that has been receiving some attention in the literature in the last few years, although there are only a handful of studies, most of which are small and limited in scope (thus limiting interpretation of the results).

In the Time Magazine article  “A Genetic Link Between Anorexia and Autism?” the author mentions a study – which I decided to cover today – on emotion regulation and recognition in patients with AN. It is not directly evaluating the link between AN and ASD, but it is related and a good starting point. I was originally going to write about two papers, but I will save the other one  (Is anorexia nervosa a version of autism spectrum disorders?) for another time.

The study design in this paper … Continue reading →

Devil in the Details: Can Poor Cognitive Function be Attributed to Anorexia Nervosa Patients’ Obsession with Detail?

Gina 9 Comments

Hi all, Gina here, again. This article is short and sweet, as is my post. I’m becoming increasingly interested in some of the more cognitive aspects of eating disorders and seeing as my background on the subject is pretty limited (re: none, although I’m taking a cognitive science class this term), I was hoping to generate some discussion /or references from readers that I could incorporate into further posts. Cheers!

It has long been suggested that people with eating disorders (in this case, specifically anorexia nervosa) display some core deficits in cognitive ability — namely impairments in executive function (Fassino et al., 2002; Pendleton Jones et al., 1991; Tchanturia et al., 2001, 2002, 2004).

If you’re like me and don’t study cognitive science, executive function basically means that people with AN show abnormal mental rigidity, working memory, capacity to manage impulsive responses (response disinhibition) and abstraction skills (i.e. abstract thinking, … Continue reading →

Impulsivity in Eating Disorders is Associated with Bingeing/Purging

Tetyana 4 Comments

There is a marshmallow in front of you. Can you wait for twenty minutes, starring intently at the white, soft, cylindrical shaped sweet, to get another marshmallow? Or do you devour it right away, forgoing the opportunity to have two sweets?

I’d probably wait. But that’s only because I don’t like marshmallows, and would be in no rush to consume either one or two of them. What about you?

That’s the famous experiment that’s shown to many first year psychology undergrads (I, too, watched videos of little kids anxious waiting for 20 minutes, or not, in my first year psych class). It was designed to measure delayed gratification, in other words, are you able to wait, to get a reward, to delay gratification?

Leah recently asked whether studies have looked at delayed gratification in eating disorder patients. What I loved about her comment is that she included a hypothesis: “I … Continue reading →