Disturbed resting-state whole-brain functional connectivity of striatal subregions in bulimia nervosa.

BACKGROUND: Disturbed self-regulation, taste reward, as well as somatosensory and visuospatial processes were thought to drive binge eating and purging behaviors that characterize bulimia nervosa (BN). Although studies have implicated a central role of the striatum in these dysfunctions, there have been no direct investigations on striatal functional connectivity (FC) in BN from a network perspective. METHOD: We calculated the FC of striatal subregions based on the resting-state fMRI data of 51 BN patients and 53 healthy women. RESULTS: Compared with the healthy women, BN patients showed increased positive FC in bilateral striatal nuclei and thalamus for nearly all of the striatal subregions, and increased negative FC in bilateral primary sensorimotor cortex and occipital areas for both ventral striatum and putamen subregions. Only for the putamen subregions, we observed reduced negative FC in the prefrontal (bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri) and parietal (right inferior parietal lobe and precuneus) areas. Several striatal connectivities with occipital and primary sensorimotor cortex significantly correlated with the severity of bulimia. CONCLUSION: The findings indicate BN-related alterations in striatal FC with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex supporting self-regulation, the subcortical striatum and thalamus involved in taste reward, as well as the visual occipital and sensorymotor regions mediating body image, which contribute to our understanding of neural circuitry of BN and encourage future therapeutic developments for BN by modulating striatal pathway.