Abstract
Anorexia nervosa is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by food restriction and high mortality rate. Research has identified consistently changes in brain monoamine neurotransmitter systems, some of which persist after recovery. There is also a host of neuroendocrine alterations during the course of illness, and it has been hypothesized that state-related changes in stress, gut, and sex hormone expression may contribute to the pathophysiology of anorexia nervosa. Recent human brain imaging research on the reward circuitry has helped us to better understand this illness. Those studies provide empiric evidence to develop models that center around the role of dopamine during development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa and integrate the neuroendocrine system and its interaction with reward processing. Those new models together with advanced basic science research provide hope that we will find treatments that can target directly the disease mechanism of anorexia nervosa and treat the disorder more effectively.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
American Psychiatric Association (2013) Desk reference to the diagnostic criteria from DSM-5. American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington, DC
Arcelus J, Mitchell AJ, Wales J, Nielsen S (2011) Mortality rates in patients with anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. A meta-analysis of 36 studies. Arch Gen Psychiatry 68(7):724–731
Bulik CM (2005) Exploring the gene-environment nexus in eating disorders. J Psychiatry Neurosci 30(5):335–339
Kaye WH, Frank GK, Bailer UF, Henry SE (2005) Neurobiology of anorexia nervosa: clinical implications of alterations of the function of serotonin and other neuronal systems. Int J Eat Disord 37(Suppl):S15–S19; discussion S20-S21
Frank GK (2015) Advances from neuroimaging studies in eating disorders. CNS Spectr 23:1–10
Frank GK (2016) The perfect storm – a bio-psycho-social risk model for developing and maintaining eating disorders. Front Behav Neurosci 10:44
Lee MC, Schiffman SS, Pappas TN (1994) Role of neuropeptides in the regulation of feeding behavior: a review of cholecystokinin, bombesin, neuropeptide Y, and galanin. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 18(3):313–323
Stockhorst U, Antov MI (2015) Modulation of fear extinction by stress, stress hormones and estradiol: a review. Front Behav Neurosci 9:359
Monteleone P, Maj M (2013) Dysfunctions of leptin, ghrelin, BDNF and endocannabinoids in eating disorders: beyond the homeostatic control of food intake. Psychoneuroendocrinology 38(3):312–330
Monteleone AM et al (2018) Neuroendocrinology and brain imaging of reward in eating disorders: a possible key to the treatment of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 80(Pt B):132–142
Dalton B et al (2019) Systematic review of in vitro cytokine production in eating disorders. Mol Cell Endocrinol 497:110308
Frank GK (2015) Advances from neuroimaging studies in eating disorders. CNS Spectr 20(4):391–400
Garcia-Garcia I et al (2013) Neural responses to visual food cues: insights from functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eur Eat Disord Rev 21(2):89–98
Kaye WH et al (2013) Does a shared neurobiology for foods and drugs of abuse contribute to extremes of food ingestion in anorexia and bulimia nervosa? Biol Psychiatry 73(9):836–842
Oinio V et al (2017) Dopaminergic modulation of reward-guided decision making in alcohol-preferring AA rats. Behav Brain Res 326:87–95
Kelley AE (2004) Ventral striatal control of appetitive motivation: role in ingestive behavior and reward-related learning. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 27(8):765–776
O'Doherty JP, Dayan P, Friston K, Critchley H, Dolan RJ (2003) Temporal difference models and reward-related learning in the human brain. Neuron 38(2):329–337
Frank GK et al (2012) Anorexia nervosa and obesity are associated with opposite brain reward response. Neuropsychopharmacology 37(9):2031–2046
DeGuzman M, Shott ME, Yang TT, Riederer J, Frank GKW (2017) Association of elevated reward prediction error response with weight gain in adolescent anorexia nervosa. Am J Psychiatry 174(6):557–565
Frank GKW et al (2018) Association of brain reward learning response with harm avoidance, weight gain, and hypothalamic effective connectivity in adolescent anorexia nervosa. JAMA Psychiat 75(10):1071–1080
Izquierdo A, Brigman JL, Radke AK, Rudebeck PH, Holmes A (2017) The neural basis of reversal learning: an updated perspective. Neuroscience 345:12–26
Foerde K, Steinglass JE (2017) Decreased feedback learning in anorexia nervosa persists after weight restoration. Int J Eat Disord 50(4):415–423
Allen PJ, Jimerson DC, Kanarek RB, Kocsis B (2017) Impaired reversal learning in an animal model of anorexia nervosa. Physiol Behav 179:313–318
Frank GK (2014) Could dopamine agonists aid in drug development for anorexia nervosa? Front Nutr 1:19
Frank GK et al (2017) The partial dopamine D2 receptor agonist aripiprazole is associated with weight gain in adolescent anorexia nervosa. Int J Eat Disord 50(4):447–450
Frank GKW, DeGuzman MC, Shott ME (2019) Motivation to eat and not to eat - the psycho-biological conflict in anorexia nervosa. Physiol Behav 206:185–190
Welch AC, Katzka WR, Dulawa SC (2018) Assessing activity-based anorexia in mice. J Vis Exp 14(135)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Frank, G.K.W. (2021). Anorexia and Undereating. In: Avena, N.M. (eds) Animal Models of Eating Disorders. Neuromethods, vol 161. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0924-8_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0924-8_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-0923-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-0924-8
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols