Brain dysfunctions, psychopathologies, and body image distortions

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_EDFFE8CE0B65
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Brain dysfunctions, psychopathologies, and body image distortions
Journal
European Psychologist
Author(s)
Mohr C., Messina S.
ISSN
1016-9040
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2015
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
20
Number
1
Pages
72-81
Language
english
Abstract
The major features in eating disorders are a preoccupation with food and its consumption and body dissatisfaction. Diagnostic manuals provide clusters of criteria according to which affected individuals can be categorized into one or other group of eating disorder. Yet, when considering the high proportion of comorbidities and ignoring the content of the symptoms (food, body), the major features seem to yield obsessional-compulsive, addictive, and impulsive qualities. In the present article, we review studies from the neuroscientific literature (mainly lesion studies) on eating disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, impulse control disorder, and addiction to investigate the possibility of a wider phenotype that can be related to a common brain network. The literature localizes this network to the right frontal lobe and its connectivities. This network, when dysfunctional, might result in a behavior that favors the preoccupation with particular thoughts, behaviors, anxieties, and uncontrollable urges that are accompanied by little scope for ongoing behavioral adjustments (e.g., impulse control). We reason that this network may turn out to be equally involved in understudied mental conditions of dysfunctional body processing such as muscle dysmorphia, body dysmorphic disorder (including esthetic surgery), and xelomelia. We finally consider previous notions of a wider phenotype approach to current diagnostic practice (using DSM), such as the possibility of a model with a reduced number of diagnostic categories and primary and secondary factors, and to etiological models of mental health conditions.
Keywords
eating disorder, body image distortions, right frontal lobe, neurological lesion studies, diagnostic manuals
Create date
14/01/2014 14:56
Last modification date
20/08/2019 17:15
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