Exploring the thalamus: a crucial hub for brain function and communication in patients with bulimia nervosa

作者：Jiani Wang, Guowei Wu, Miao Wang, Weihua Li, Yiling Wang, Xiaodan Ren, Xuan Wei, Zhenghan Yang, Zhanjiang Li, Zhenchang Wang, Qian Chen, Peng Zhang, Lirong Tang · 发表于：Journal of Eating Disorders · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1186/s40337-023-00933-6 · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Eating Disorders and Behaviors、Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts、Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies

BACKGROUND: Bulimia nervosa (BN) is an eating disorder characterized by recurrent binge eating and compensatory behaviors. The thalamus plays a crucial role in the neural circuitry related to eating behavior and needs to be further explored in BN. METHODS: In this study, 49 BN patients and 44 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. We applied the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation to investigate regional brain activity in the thalamus and functional connectivity (FC) to examine the synchronization of activity between thalamic subregions and other brain regions in both groups. All results underwent false discovery rate (p < 0.05, FDR correction) correction. Pearson correlation analysis was performed to assess the relationship between the patients' abnormal clinical performance and the thalamic alterations (p < 0.05, FDR correction). RESULTS: We found no significant differences in neural activity between BN patients and HCs in the sixteen thalamic subregions. However, compared to the HCs, the individuals with BN showed decreased FC between the thalamic subregions and several regions, including the bilateral prefrontal cortex, right inferior parietal lobule, right supplementary motor area, right insula, cingulate gyrus and vermis. Additionally, BN patients showed increased FC between the thalamic subregions and visual association regions, primary sensorimotor cortex, and left cerebellum. These altered FC patterns in the thalamus were found to be correlated with cli...