Neurobiology of Anorexia NervosaAnorexia Nervosa (AN) is one of the most common mental diseases in girls and young women. AN leads to severe medical complications and an increased mortality rate. Due to interruptions of somatic and psychological development processes in the course of this disease, the patients often suffer from long lasting negative consequences.
Previous studies in human subjects and animals have shown alterations in several neurotransmitter systems and neuropeptides, possibly induced by undernourishment and underweight. There is still little knowledge about the biological mechanism that promote the occurrence of this disease. One possibility to differentiate “state”-markers (caused by underweight) from the more stable “trait” markers is the examination of patients with AN at different stages of the disease (e.g. acute phase, symptomatic phase and after successful treatment). In close collaboration with the Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at University Hospital Charité Berlin our group is researching disorders in the serotonergic system, of appetite regulating peptides and neurotrophic proteins as well as genetic associations. Additionally, neural correlates of important AN-involved psychological processes will be analyzed by magnetic resonance imaging methods. In this context we are especially interested in processes of reward, learning, cognitive control and regulation of emotions. The MRI data are analyzed using the following software packages and/or pipelines which are all freely available: - SPM (Statistical Parametric Mapping, http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/)
- FSL (FMRIB Software Library, http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/)
- FreeSurfer including TRACULA (FreeSurfer Software Suite, http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/)
- Nypipe (Neuroimaging in Python Pipelines and Interfaces, http://nipy.org/nipype/)
Contact persons:
- Prof. Dr. S. Ehrlich, Dipl.-Inf. D. Geisler, Dr. F. Bernardoni, Dipl.-Psych. I. Böhm, Dipl.-Psych. F. Ritschel, M. SeidelMSc., Dr. J. King, Dr. J. Zwipp
Collaborators:
- Prof. Dr. Phil. T. Goschke, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 940) Volition and Cognitive Control, TU Dresden
- Prof. Dr. M. Smolka, Section of Systems Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital C. G. Carus, TU Dresden
- Prof. Dr. U. Lehmkuhl and Dr. R. Burghardt, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
- Prof. Dr. C. Jacobi, Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, TU Dresden
- Prof. Dr. med. B. Herpertz-Dahlmann, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen
- Prof. Dr. med. F. Zepf, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen
- Prof. Dr. med. J. Hebebrand, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, LVR-Klinikum Essen
- Prof. Dr. A. Hinney, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, LVR-Klinikum Essen
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