Adapting a neuroscience-informed intervention to alter reward mechanisms of anorexia nervosa: a novel direction for future research

Abstract

Plain English summary Past research has shown that people with anorexia nervosa (AN) have trouble experiencing positive emotions in response to many common life events (e.g., socializing, winning money). This tendency to under-respond to positive events is similar to that found in people with mood and anxiety disorders. However, people with AN also appear to feel more positive emotions when they think about or engage in eating-disorder behaviors (e.g., cutting back on their eating, exercising, thinking about being very thin). For this reason, people with AN may continually turn to eating-disorder behaviors, rather than other actions, to feel good about themselves and their lives. In this paper, we describe a new treatment, Positive Affect Treatment (PAT), that we believe has the potential to help individuals with AN gain more happiness and fulfillment from their lives outside of their eating disorder. Our expectation is that such a change may result in individuals with AN no longer needing their eating disorder to feel good.

Keywords

• Anorexia nervosa
• Positive affect
• Reward
• Treatment
• Intervention
• Neuroscience