Why Don’t You Just Eat? How Neuroscience Can Explain the Enigma of Eating Disorders
What is it about?
We present a neuroscience and human brain imaging–based model that incorporates individual motivations to change eating, fear conditioning and biological adaptations leading to the development of a vicious cycle and ongoing eating disorder behaviors.
Why is it important?
Eating disorders are among the deadliest disorders in psychiatry and despite intensive treatment, many with those disorders relapse or have a long and enduring course that takes away years of that person's life. Research has identified environmental, psychological, and biological risk factors that can contribute to the the development of eating disorders. Nevertheless, the patterns of self-starvation, binge eating, and purging behaviors are difficult to reconcile with the typical mechanisms that regulate appetite, hunger, and satiety. The article that is based on animal and human research describes how individuals with eating disorders can become trapped in a vicious cycle that is difficult to escape from, helps bring those behaviors out of the black box to educate patients and their loved ones, and provides directions for developing new treatments to target key mechanisms.