Neuropsychological functioning pretreatment and posttreatment in an inpatient eating disorders program

Abstract

Patients with anorexia nervosa exhibit subtle neuropsychological dysfunction, which resolves at least partially during treatment. This improvement does not appear to be associated with an increase in BMI. However, it is possible that BMI is not a sufficiently sensitive indicator of nutritional status or that longer-term follow-up is necessary to reveal the nutrition-cognition relationship that we were seeking.

In first presentation adolescent anorexia nervosa, do cognitive markers of underweight status change with weight gain following a refeeding intervention?

“…10 In recent times, a well-replicated finding using adult samples has been impairment in set-shifting and other executive function tasks in underweight AN (UAN) [11][12][13][14] individuals and their unaffected siblings. 15 Following weight gain or treatment, some adult, prospective studies have reported an improvement in cognitive impairment 6,7,9 consistent with a statelike effect, whereas others have shown persistence of impairments 5,16 consistent with a more trait like effect. Since the samples studied have primarily been adult samples (many of which have chronic illness histories), it remains a possibility that the deficits found are a ''scar'' effect of being unwell for a long time or indicate risk factors for the development of chronic AN.…”

Neuropsychological study of underweight and “weight‐recovered” anorexia nervosa compared with bulimia nervosa and normal controls

“…Cognitive deficits in AN may be the consequence of factors other than nutritional deficiency, 1 as a number of studies have neither demonstrated amelioration following nutritional restoration [4][5][6][19][20][21][22] nor correlation with low body mass indices (BMI). 7,23 Although the remission of physical symptoms in AN generally precedes psychological recovery, 24 findings regarding the effect of weight-recovery on neuropsychological function in AN have been conflicting. 25 The duration of weight-recovery in studies of AN has also varied from 3 months in the short-term to at least 1 year in the long-term.…”

Differentiation of Cognitive and Motor Aspects in a Digit Symbol Substitution Test in Anorexia nervosa Patients, before and after Weight Restoration

“…Probably due to differences in methodology, this research has yielded conflicting results. Most often, impairment on tasks of attention/concentration has been demonstrated and AN patients were described as having less overall cognitive and psychomotor ability [1][2][3][4]. In contrast with these reports, several investigators found AN patients not to be different from normal controls, or even above average for verbal fluency, ability to mobilize psychomotor activity and processing speed [5][6][7][8][9].…”