Eating disorders and habit learning circuits of the brain…

Friday, January 12, 2024. Thinking about you, R.

A recent study from Stanford suggests that eating disorders are likely not the only disorders that have problems with the brain’s habit circuitry at their core.

• Eating disorders may be challenging to treat, because of changes to the brain’s neurocircuitry, according to recent research.

• Researchers have found closer links than expected between the brain’s habit-learning circuits and those involved in binge eating.

  Humans with binge eating behaviors in this study had a measurably lower sensitivity to dopamine, often known as the ‘pleasure chemical’.

  This lower sensitivity may result from too much indulgence, which is caused by habit circuitry in the brain going out of bounds.

Mr. Allan Wang, the study’s first author, explained how habit and binge eating are linked:

“A habit is a learned association.

Maybe initially the behavior started to achieve a goal, but eventually you’ve done it so many times that you do the action without thinking about the outcome.

We were interested in whether habit formation in the brain might be involved in a complicated behavior like binge eating,”

How the study was conducted…

In this research study, the research team compared the brain scans of 34 diagnosed binge eaters with 22 healthy control humans.

The study findings suggested that they showed that binge eaters had critical differences in the brain’s habit circuitry.

Here’s the neuroscience part. The sensorimotor putamen is a part of the brain structure that controls habits.

It also has powerful links in the motor cortex, an area involved in movement, among people with a binge eating disorder.

It also had stronger links to the orbitofrontal cortex, where the brain evaluates the end game of rewards, like how good a food is expected to taste.

Weaker connections were seen to the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in self-control.

Mr. Wang explained:

“Possibly, there’s some loss of self-regulation of this behavior.

At the same time, there’s increased strength of circuits involved in the motor behavior of binge eating.”

Is Lower dopamine sensitivity the culprit?

Those with binge eating disorder had lower dopamine sensitivity in the habit circuitry.

Mr Wang summed up his study:

“Our findings suggest that the more dopamine exposure these patients have had in the context of binge eating, the more altered their overall habit circuit connectivity is.”

Eating disorders are likely not the only disorders that have problems with habit circuitry at their core.

People with eating disorders may benefit from this neurological insight into their condition.”

Mr. Wang again:

“I think there’s also some mental benefit for patients in being able to reframe these behaviors as rooted in habit.

Eating disorders are not a fault of their personality. They’re related to physical changes in the brain.”

Be well, stay, kind, and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Allan R. Wang et al. Human habit neural circuitry may be perturbed in eating disorders. Sci. Transl. Med.15,eabo4919(2023).DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.abo4919