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. 2023 Nov;56(11):2096-2106.
doi: 10.1002/eat.24028. Epub 2023 Aug 10.

Emotional food-cue-reactivity in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: An electroencephalography study

Katharina Naomi Eichin  1   2 , Claudio Georgii  1 , Rebekka Schnepper  1   3 , Ulrich Voderholzer  4 , Jens Blechert  1
Affiliations

Emotional food-cue-reactivity in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: An electroencephalography study

Katharina Naomi Eichin et al. Int J Eat Disord. 2023 Nov.

Abstract

Objective: Food-cue-reactivity entails neural and experiential responses to the sight and smell of attractive foods. Negative emotions can modulate such cue-reactivity and this might be central to the balance between restrictive versus bulimic symptomatology in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN).

Method: Pleasantness ratings and electrocortical responses to food images were measured in patients with AN (n = 35), BN (n = 32) and matched healthy controls (HC, n = 35) in a neutral state and after idiosyncratic negative emotion induction while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The EEG data were analyzed using a mass testing approach.

Results: Individuals with AN showed reduced pleasantness for foods compared to objects alongside elevated widespread occipito-central food-object discrimination between 170 and 535 ms, indicative of strong neural cue-reactivity. Food-object discrimination was further increased in the negative emotional condition between 690 and 1200 ms over centroparietal regions. Neither of these effects was seen in individuals with BN.

Discussion: Emotion modulated food-cue-reactivity in AN might reflect a decreased appetitive response in negative mood. Such specific (emotion-)regulatory strategies require more theoretical work and clinical attention. The absence of any marked effects in BN suggests that emotional cue-reactivity might be less prominent in this group or quite specific to certain emotional contexts or food types.

Public significance: Negative affectivity is a risk factor for the development of eating disorders and individuals with eating disorders experience problems with emotion regulation. To better understand the effects of negative emotions, the present study investigated how they affected neural correlates of food perception in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Keywords: anorexia nervosa; bulimia nervosa; electroencephalography; food-cue-reactivity; negative emotion.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Emotional food‐cue‐reactivity task. Visualization of the emotional picture viewing task. Depending on the condition, emotional or neutral sentences were interleaved with pictures of foods and objects. Additionally, images were rated on pleasantness and/or desire to eat once per block.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Pleasantness ratings for foods and objects in the neutral and negative condition. Pleasantness ratings for foods and objects on a visual analogue scale from 0 to 100 in the neutral and negative condition. HC = healthy controls (n = 35); AN = anorexia nervosa (n = 35); BN = bulimia nervosa (n = 35).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
General food‐cue‐reactivity hypothesis (early cluster). (a) Results of the EEG mass‐testing analysis for the image type × group interaction. The blue frame highlights the early cluster analyzed for the general food‐cue hypothesis. (b) Results of the linear model for the early cluster (blue frame). Beta values indicate the magnitude of influence of conditions on EEG amplitude. (c) Topoplot for the the time window of the early cluster. HC = healthy controls (n = 35); AN = anorexia nervosa (n = 35); BN = bulimia nervosa (n = 32).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Emotional food‐cue‐reactivity hypothesis. (a) Results of the EEG mass‐testing analysis for the image type × emotion × group interaction. (b) Results of the linear model for the extracted cluster. Beta values indicate the magnitude of influence of conditions on EEG amplitude. (c) shows the topoplot for the cluster time window. HC = healthy controls (n = 35); AN = anorexia nervosa (n = 35); BN = bulimia nervosa (n = 32).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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