Imperial College London
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ProfessorDashaNicholls

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Brain Sciences

Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
 
 
 
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Contact

 

d.nicholls

 
 
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Location

 

Commonwealth BuildingHammersmith Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Burmester:2021:10.1186/s40337-021-00372-1,
author = {Burmester, V and Graham, E and Nicholls, D},
doi = {10.1186/s40337-021-00372-1},
journal = {Journal of Eating Disorders},
title = {Physiological, emotional and neural responses to visual stimuli in eating disorders: a review},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00372-1},
volume = {9},
year = {2021}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - BACKGROUND: Overconcern with food and shape/weight stimuli are central to eating disorder maintenance with attentional biases seen towards these images not present in healthy controls. These stimuli trigger changes in the physiological, emotional, and neural responses in people with eating disorders, and are regularly used in research and clinical practice. However, selection of stimuli for these treatments is frequently based on self-reported emotional ratings alone, and whether self-reports reflect objective responses is unknown. MAIN BODY: This review assessed the associations across emotional self-report, physiological, and neural responses to both food and body-shape/weight stimuli in people with anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge eating disorder (BED). For food stimuli, either an aversive or lack of physiological effect was generated in people with AN, together with a negative emotional response on neuroimaging, and high subjective anxiety ratings. People with BN showed a positive self-rating, an aversive physiological reaction, and a motivational neural response. In BED, an aversive physiological reaction was found in contrast to motivational/appetitive neural responses, with food images rated as pleasant. The results for shape/weight stimuli showed aversive responses in some physiological modalities, which was reflected in both the emotional and neural responses, but this aversive response was not consistent across physiological studies. CONCLUSIONS: Shape/weight stimuli are more reliable for use in therapy or research than food stimuli as the impact of these images is more consistent across subjective and objective responses. Care should be taken when using food stimuli due to the disconnect reported in this review.
AU  - Burmester,V
AU  - Graham,E
AU  - Nicholls,D
DO  - 10.1186/s40337-021-00372-1
PY  - 2021///
SN  - 2050-2974
TI  - Physiological, emotional and neural responses to visual stimuli in eating disorders: a review
T2  - Journal of Eating Disorders
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00372-1
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33597022
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/87497
VL  - 9
ER  -
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