Jamie Feusner

1 month ago | nature.com | Nina Rouhani |Cooper D. Grossman |Jamie Feusner |Anita Tusche

Food seeking and avoidance engage primary reward systems to drive behavior. It is nevertheless unclear whether innate or learned food biases interact with general reward processing to interfere with goal-directed choice. To this end, we recruited a large non-clinical sample of females with high eating-disorder symptoms (‘HED’) and a matched sample of females with low eating-disorder symptoms (‘LED’) to complete a reward-learning task where the calorie content of food stimuli was incidental to the goal of maximizing monetary reward. We find and replicate a low-calorie food bias in HED and a high-calorie food bias in LED, reflecting the strength of pre-experimental food-reward associations. An emotional arousal manipulation shifts this group-dependent bias across individual differences, with interoceptive awareness predicting this change. Reinforcement-learning models further identify distinct cognitive components supporting these group-specific food biases. Our results highlight the influence of reinforcement-based mechanisms and emotional arousal in eliciting potentially maladaptive food-reward associations. Disordered eating can disrupt the rewarding value of food. Here, the authors show in a female sample that eating disorder symptoms, emotional arousal, and interoceptive awareness modulate goal-irrelevant food biases during reinforcement learning.

Aug 14, 2024 | nature.com | Jamie Feusner

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback targeting areas such as the amygdala or insula for depression or anxiety symptoms leads to significant improvements [1]. However, there are barriers to widespread access to fMRI neurofeedback, including the necessary infrastructure and high costs of MRI data acquisition.

May 15, 2024 | nature.com | Jamie Feusner |Eileen Luders |Florian Kurth |Alicja Nowacka |Ronald Ly

Anorexia nervosa is an often-severe psychiatric illness characterized by significantly low body weight, fear of gaining weight, and distorted body image. Multiple neuroimaging studies have shown abnormalities in cortical morphology, mostly associated with the starvation state. Investigations of white matter, while more limited in number, have suggested global and regional volume reductions, as well as abnormal diffusivity in multiple regions including the corpus callosum. Yet, no study has specifically examined thickness of the corpus callosum, a large white matter tract instrumental in the inter-hemispheric integration of sensory, motor, and cognitive information. We analyzed MRI data from 48 adolescents and adults with anorexia nervosa and 50 healthy controls, all girls/women, to compare corpus callosum thickness and examined relationships with body mass index (BMI), illness duration, and eating disorder symptoms (controlling for BMI). There were no significant group differences in corpus callosum thickness. In the anorexia nervosa group, severity of body shape concerns was significantly, positively correlated with callosal thickness in the rostrum, genu, rostral body, isthmus, and splenium. In addition, there were significant positive correlations between eating disorder-related obsessions and compulsions and thickness of the anterior midbody, rostral body, and splenium. There were no significant associations between callosal thickness and BMI or illness duration. In sum, those with AN with worse concerns about bodily appearance and worse eating disorder-related obsessive thought patterns and compulsive behaviours have regionally thicker corpus callosum, independent of current weight status. These findings provide important neurobiological links to key, specific eating disorder behavioural phenotypes.

Nov 25, 2023 | biorxiv.org | Justin Ng |Ju-Chi Yu |Jamie Feusner |Colin Hawco

AbstractGeneral intelligence, referred to as g, is hypothesized to emerge from the capacity to dynamically and adaptively reorganize macroscale brain connectivity. Temporal reconfiguration can be assessed using dynamic functional connectivity (dFC), which captures the propensity of brain connectivity to transition between a recurring repertoire of distinct states.

Jul 24, 2023 | biorxiv.org | Justin Ng |Ju-Chi Yu |Jamie Feusner |Colin Hawco

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv. NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article. Your Email * Your Name * Send To * Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. Message Subject (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv Message Body (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.