Emotional Eating, Binge Eating and Animal Models of Binge-Type Eating Disorders

Abstract

Evidence has been found to suggest that for some high-risk individuals, obesity/binge eating may develop as an impulsive reaction to negative emotions that over time becomes a compulsive habit. Animal models highlight the neural mechanisms that might underlie this process and suggest similarities with substance use disorders. Emotional difficulties and neurobiological factors have a role in the aetiology of eating and weight disorders. Precise treatments targeted at these mechanisms may be of help for people who have difficulties with compulsive overeating.

Compulsivity is measurable across distinct psychiatric symptom domains and is associated with familial risk and reward-related attentional capture

“…While OCD is the classic archetypal disorder of compulsivity, it is increasingly recognized that mental disorders listed in non-OCD DSM diagnostic categories also have compulsive features, notably gambling disorder, substance addictions, and binge-eating disorder. [3][4][5] These conditions collectively share a number of parallels including high rates of comorbid expression. In order to better understand the common etiological and biological predisposing factors towards these compulsive symptom types, it is necessary to identify transdiagnostic markers that cut across conventionally separate conditions.…”

To Go or Not to Go: A Proof of Concept Study Testing Food‐Specific Inhibition Training for Women with Eating and Weight Disorders

“…A strength of this study is that it is the first to test the effectiveness of food go/no‐go training for women with eating disorders. This is in line with calls for the testing of more precise treatment approaches for these conditions (Turton et al ., ; Voon, 2015). Further, the inclusion of overweight/obese women and a lean control group allowed for the comparison of food craving ratings and training effects across participant groups.…”

“…Inhibitory control is the ability to override an impulse or stop an initiated action and has been highlighted by the Research Domain Criteria as a ‘cognitive system’ that might underlie psychopathology across a range of mental illnesses (National Institute of Mental Health, ). Indeed, food‐specific inhibitory control could be a mechanism that subserves binge eating episodes in bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge eating disorder (BED; Pearson, Wonderlich, & Smith, ; Robbins, Gillan, Smith, de Wit, & Ersche, ; Turton, Chami, & Treasure, ). In support of this, a meta‐analysis (Wu, Hartmann, Skunde, Herzog, & Friederich, ) found impairments in inhibitory control towards food and eating stimuli in people with BN (moderate effect size: Cohen's d = −.67), and food‐specific inhibitory control difficulties have also been reported for people with BED with this difficulty positively correlating with eating disorder psychopathology (Svaldi, Naumann, Trentowska, & Schmitz, ).…”

Towards a Translational Approach to Food Addiction: Implications for Bulimia Nervosa

“…In this article, we will use bulimia nervosa (BN) as the exemplar. The "Addictive Appetite Model" proposes that three primary processes maintain psychopathology in BN: (1) the high salience of palatable foods [3], which is moderated by a genetic susceptibility to food approach tendencies, reduced efficiency in satiation processes [4] and/or episodes of food restriction; (2) chronic stress and interpersonal difficulties resulting in a deficiency of alternative rewards and a primed stress system [5]; and (3) large swings in blood glucose, caused by the consumption of foods with a high glycaemic index, self-induced vomiting or insulin resistance (and insulin omission in diabetes mellitus). These pathways may contribute to compulsive binge eating behaviour through aberrations in dopaminergic function in a similar way to substance addictions.…”