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Extremes of eating are associated with reduced neural taste discrimination
Author(s) -
Frank Guido K.W.,
Shott Megan E.,
Keffler Carrie,
Cornier MarcAndre
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of eating disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.785
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1098-108X
pISSN - 0276-3478
DOI - 10.1002/eat.22538
Subject(s) - psychology , eating disorders , taste , bulimia nervosa , insula , orbitofrontal cortex , anorexia nervosa , audiology , medicine , psychiatry , neuroscience , cognition , prefrontal cortex
Objective Eating disorders are severe psychiatric disorders of unknown etiology. Understanding how neuronal function affects food choices could help personalize treatment based on brain function. Here we wanted to determine whether disordered eating behavior is associated with alterations in the primary taste cortex's ability to classify taste stimuli, which could interfere with taste reward processing. Method One‐hundred and six women, 27 healthy comparison (age 26.15 ± 6.95 years), 21 with restricting‐type anorexia nervosa (AN; age 23.10 ± 6.14 years), 19 recovered from restricting‐type AN (recovered AN; age 26.95 ± 5.31 years), 20 with bulimia nervosa (BN; age 25.15 ± 5.31 years), and 19 with obesity (age 28.16 ± 8.13 years), received sucrose, control solution or no taste stimulation during functional magnetic resonance brain imaging. Multivariate Bayesian pattern analysis (decoding) and cross‐validation tested taste classification accuracy (adjusted for comorbidity, medication use, taste perception, interoception, and brain activation volume). Results For sucrose versus control solution, classification accuracy differed ( F = 2.53, P < 0.041). Post hoc tests indicated higher classification accuracy in healthy comparison compared to women with AN ( P < 0.016) or obesity ( P < 0.027), and in recovered AN as compared to AN ( P < 0.016) or obesity ( P < 0.047) groups. Taste stimulation resulted in sparse insula voxel activation across all groups. Discussion Reduced classification accuracy across stimuli in women with AN or obesity could indicate low brain encoding discrimination of stimulus quality, which could contribute to altered reward activation and eating drive that is not adjusted to nutritional needs. This deficit appears to normalize with recovery from AN, but adjusting food flavor intensity could aid in the treatment of individuals with AN or obesity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.(Int J Eat Disord 2016; 49:603–612)