Social insecurity in relation to orbitofrontal activity in patients with eating disorders: a near-infrared spectroscopy study

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Masahiko Ando¹  Hiroto Katayama²  Tetsuya Iidaka²  Miho Imaeda²  Branko Aleksic²  Naoko Kawano²  Kunihiro Kohmura²  Kazuo Nishioka²  Norio Ozaki²  Satoshi Tanaka³  Yukihiro Noda⁴ 

[1] Center for Advanced Medicine and Clinical Research, Nagoya University Hospital, 466-8550, Nagoya, Aichi-ken, Japan;Department of Psychiatry, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, 466-8550, Nagoya, Aichi-ken, Japan;Department of Psychiatry, Nagoya University Hospital, 65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, 466-8550, Nagoya, Aichi-ken, Japan;Division of Clinical Science and Neuropsychopharmacology, Graduate School of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama, Tenpaku-ku, 468-8503, Nagoya, Aichi-ken, Japan;The Academic Frontier Project for Private Universities, Comparative Cognitive Science Institutes, Meijo University, 1-501 Shiogamaguchi, Tenpaku-ku, 468-8502, Nagoya, Aichi-ken, Japan;

关键词: Anorexia nervosa;    Extremely low body weight;    Near-infrared spectroscopy;    Social isolation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-14-173

 received in 2013-12-24, accepted in 2014-06-05,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFunctional neuroimaging techniques are widely used to elucidate changes in brain activity, and various questionnaires are used to investigate psychopathological features in patients with eating disorders (ED). It is well known that social skills and interpersonal difficulties are strongly associated with the psychopathology of patients with ED. However, few studies have examined the association between brain activity and social relationships in patients with ED, particularly in patients with extremely low body weight.MethodsIn this study, 22-channel near-infrared spectroscopy was used to quantify regional hemodynamic changes during a letter fluency task (LFT) in 20 female patients with ED with a mean body mass index of 14.0 kg/m2and 31 female controls (CTLs). Symptoms were assessed using the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 and Beck Depression Inventory. We hypothesized that frontal activity in patients with ED would be lower than in CTLs and would show different correlations with psychopathological features compared with CTLs.ResultsThe LFT performance and score on the social insecurity subscale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 were significantly higher in the ED group than in the CTL group. The mean change in oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) in bilateral frontal regions during the LFT was significantly smaller in the ED group than in the CTL group. Social insecurity score was positively correlated with the concentration of oxy-Hb in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex in the ED group but not in the CTL group.ConclusionsThese results suggest that activity of the orbitofrontal cortex is associated with social insecurity and disturbed in patients with ED. Therefore, disturbed orbitofrontal cortex activity may underlie the lack of insight and social isolation that is characteristic of patients with ED.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Katayama et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.