Background: It is possible that psychopathological differences exist between the restricting and bulimic forms of anorexia nervosa. We investigated localized differences of brain blood flow of anorexia nervosa patients using SPECT image analysis with statistic parametric mapping (SPM) in an attempt to link brain blood flow patterns to neurophysiologic characteristics.
Methods: The subjects enrolled in this study included the following three groups: pure restrictor anorexics (AN-R), anorexic bulimics (AN-BP), and healthy volunteers (HV). All images were transformed into the standard anatomical space of the stereotactic brain atlas, then smoothed. After statistical analysis of each brain image, the relationships among images were evaluated.
Results: SPM analysis of the SPECT images revealed that the blood flow of frontal area mainly containing bilateral anterior cingulate gyri (ACC) was significantly decreased in the AN-R group compared to the AN-BP and HV groups.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that some localized functions of the ACCare possibly relevant to the psychopathological aspects of AN-R.