Different brain regions support deliberation during food choice in disordered and healthy eating

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Healthy and anorexia nervosa participants use similar decision processes, but AN individuals engage the striatum in addition to the hippocampus when deliberating about food choices.

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The study used a decision-making task paired with computational modeling and fMRI to examine how individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) and healthy controls make food versus non-food choices, focusing on the neural evidence used during deliberation. The pre-registered results indicated that AN participants employ an evidence-sampling and evaluation decision process resembling that of healthy individuals across decision types, but differ during food deliberation by recruiting the striatum in addition to the hippocampus. The authors interpret this as a shift in the types of evidence inputs used for food choice rather than a fundamentally maladaptive decision process. This paper is centrally about endometriosis or adenomyosis — it is not, and it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

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Abstract

Abstract The brain is wired to drive behavior towards foods that are high in sugar and fat. This natural pattern is reversed in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN), who prefer low-sugar and low-fat foods to the point of starvation and even death. Here, we aimed to understand how changes in the brain contribute to the pattern of maladaptive food-related decisions in AN. We combined decision-making tasks with computational modeling of behavior and fMRI to examine food and non food-related decisions in individuals with AN and healthy controls (HC). Results from this pre-registered study suggest that patients with AN employ a decision process that relies on sampling and evaluating evidence that is similar to that in healthy individuals, regardless of the type of decision. However, when deliberating about what to eat, while HC engage the hippocampus, individuals with AN engage the striatum in addition to the hippocampus, apparently as sources of evidence in the decision process. These findings suggest that the maladaptive reversal of preferences in AN is related to reliance on different inputs to the process that leads to choice of food, rather than a maladaptive decision process per se .
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Different brain regions support deliberation during food choice in disordered and healthy eating | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Different brain regions support deliberation during food choice in disordered and healthy eating Akram Bakkour, Alexandra Muratore, Eileen Hartnett, Karin Foerde, and 4 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7753169/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The brain is wired to drive behavior towards foods that are high in sugar and fat. This natural pattern is reversed in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN), who prefer low-sugar and low-fat foods to the point of starvation and even death. Here, we aimed to understand how changes in the brain contribute to the pattern of maladaptive food-related decisions in AN. We combined decision-making tasks with computational modeling of behavior and fMRI to examine food and non food-related decisions in individuals with AN and healthy controls (HC). Results from this pre-registered study suggest that patients with AN employ a decision process that relies on sampling and evaluating evidence that is similar to that in healthy individuals, regardless of the type of decision. However, when deliberating about what to eat, while HC engage the hippocampus, individuals with AN engage the striatum in addition to the hippocampus, apparently as sources of evidence in the decision process. These findings suggest that the maladaptive reversal of preferences in AN is related to reliance on different inputs to the process that leads to choice of food, rather than a maladaptive decision process per se . Biological sciences/Neuroscience/Cognitive neuroscience/Decision Health sciences/Diseases/Psychiatric disorders anorexia nervosa decision-making food choice restrictive eating fMRI computational psychiatry Full Text Additional Declarations Yes there is potential conflict of interest. Supplementary Files MuratoreANDMSsupplement.pdf Supplemental Material MuratoreANDMSsupplement.pdf Supplemetary Information Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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