A study of neurocognition in bulimia nervosa and eating disorder not otherwise specified–bulimia type

Abstract

Neurocognition in bulimia nervosa (BN) is under-researched. This study investigated aspects of attention (d2-Letter Cancellation Task), inhibitory control (Stroop and go/no-go task), and decision making (Game of Dice Task) in 40 people with BN, 30 with eating disorder not otherwise specified–BN type (EDNOS-BN), and 65 healthy controls (HCs). The National Adult Reading Test (NART) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) were also administered. Analyses of covariance (covariates: age, NART, and DASS-21) showed that people with BN and EDNOS-BN performed as well as HCs on all tasks. Attention task performance was poorer in the EDNOS-BN than in the BN group.

Keywords:

• Neurocognition
• Bulimia nervosa
• Attention
• Decision making
• Inhibitory control

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the Swiss Anorexia Nervosa Foundation, the Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for Mental Health, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research Scheme (RP-PG-0606-1043). The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or Department of Health. Frederique Van den Eynde was a research fellow in the Marie Curie Research Training Network INTACT (MRTN-CT-2006-035988) from 2007 to 2010. The authors thank M. Brand for kindly providing us with the Game of Dice Task and K. Rubia for kindly providing the go/no-go task. The authors report no conflict of interest.

Notes

¹The term “attention” is used hereafter when referring to the concept that is measured by the LCT. Although, theoretically, attention and concentration can be differentiated, in practice they are difficult to separate. Vigilance refers to the ability to sustain and focus attention (Lezak, Howleson, Loring, Hannay, & Fischer, 2004).