Habit-linked brain circuits light up in people with eating disorders

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"Brain scans of people with binge-eating disorder or bulimia show altered activity in areas linked to habit formation and hint at new possibilities for eating-disorder treatments. ...

This led them to two structures: the sensorimotor putamen and the associative caudate.

Because habitual behaviours probably play a part in binge-eating disorder and bulimia nervosa, the team then examined the brains of 34 women with either of these disorders to see whether there was altered activity in the two structures.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging uncovered changes in these areas in people with eating disorders, compared with those without them. The imaging showed alterations in the structure of the grey matter and in dopamine signalling in the sensorimotor putamen in particular.

Altered connections

In people with binge-eating disorder or bulimia, the connections between some parts of the cortex and the habit-reinforcing sensorimotor putamen were much stronger than in healthy controls: connectivity to the anterior cingulate cortex was decreased, but it was increased to the orbitofrontal cortex and motor cortex. ..."

From the abstract:

"Circuit-based mechanisms mediating the development and execution of habitual behaviors involve complex cortical-striatal interactions that have been investigated in animal models and more recently in humans. However, how human brain circuits implicated in habit formation may be perturbed in psychiatric disorders remains unclear. First, we identified the locations of the sensorimotor putamen and associative caudate in the human brain using probabilistic tractography from Human Connectome Project data. We found that multivariate connectivity of the sensorimotor putamen was altered in humans with binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa and that the degree of alteration correlated with severity of disordered eating behavior. Furthermore, the extent of this circuit aberration correlated with mean diffusivity in the sensorimotor putamen and decreased basal dopamine D2/3 receptor binding potential in the striatum, consistent with previously reported microstructural changes and dopamine signaling mediating habit learning in animal models. Our findings suggest a neural circuit that links habit learning and binge eating behavior in humans, which could, in part, explain the treatment-resistant behavior common to eating disorders and other psychiatric conditions."

Habit-linked brain circuits light up in people with eating disorders Parts of the brain associated with habit formation seem unusually active in people with eating disorders.

Human habit neural circuitry may be perturbed in eating disorders (no public access)

The putamen (highlighted green) has been associated with habit formation, following brain scans of women with binge-eating disorder or bulimia