Prefrontal responses during proactive and reactive inhibition are differentially impacted by stress in anorexia and bulimia nervosa

BackgroundBinge-eating is a distressing, transdiagnostic eating disorder symptom associated with impulsivity, particularly in negative mood states. Neuroimaging studies of bulimia nervosa (BN) report reduced activity in fronto-striatal regions implicated in self-regulatory control. However, it remains unknown if negative affective states, including stress, impair self-regulation, and, if so, whether such self-regulatory deficits generalize to binge-eating in underweight individuals (i.e., the bingeing/purging subtype of anorexia nervosa; AN-BP). MethodsWe determined the effect of acute stress on inhibitory control in 85 women (33 BN, 22 AN-BP, 30 matched controls). Participants underwent repeated functional MRI scanning, during performance of the stop-signal anticipation task, a validated measure of proactive (i.e., anticipation of stopping) and reactive (outright stopping) inhibition. Neural and behavioral responses to induced, psychological stress and a control task were evaluated on two separate days. ResultsWomen with BN had reduced proactive inhibition while prefrontal responses were increased in both AN-BP and BN. Reactive inhibition was neurally and behaviorally intact in both diagnostic groups. Both AN-BP and BN groups showed distinct, stress-induced changes in prefrontal activity during both proactive and reactive inhibition. However, task performance was not significantly affected by stress. ConclusionsThese findings offer novel evidence of reduced proactive inhibition in BN, yet inhibitory control deficits did not generalize to AN-BP. While both groups showed altered neural responses during inhibition following stress, neither group demonstrated stress-induced performance deficits. As such, our findings counsel against a simplistic, stress-induced failure of regulation as a holistic explanation for binge-eating in these conditions.