Original articleFunctional Neuroanatomy of Body Shape Perception in Healthy and Eating-Disordered Women
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-two patients with eating disorders were recruited from the inpatient (n = 9) and outpatient (n = 13) services of the South London and Maudsley Trust. Eighteen healthy women (CO) were recruited by advertisement and screened for abnormal eating habits (underweight, binge-eating, self-induced vomiting, purging) and neurological or psychiatric disease. Lifetime diagnosis and inclusion criteria were ascertained with the structured EATATE interview, based on the Eating Disorder Examination (
Subjective Ratings of Stimuli
The ratings of fear and disgust were highly correlated for all categories of stimuli (Pearson’s .71 <r < .94), and hence an average of these two is reported as a measure of “aversion” (Figure 1). Images of bodies were rated as more aversive by patients than by control subjects [F(2,117) = 25.9, p < .001; Contrast I: t(1,117) = 6.6, p < .001]. This was true for all three categories of body shapes [underweight: t(1,37) = 3.1, p < .01; normal: t(1,37) = 4.1, p < .001; overweight: t(1,37) = 6.7, p
Discussion
Previous research has indicated that the processing of body image is underpinned by neural systems involved in analyzing perceptual aspects of the human body (EBA; Downing et al 2001) and in representing a person’s own body schema (right parietal cortex; e.g., McGlynn and Schacter 1989). In the present study, the pattern of brain response to female body shapes is consistent across different categories of stimuli (underweight, normal, overweight) and across groups of participating women (with or
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