Eating Disorder Research Society - Top Abstract

Research from our Medical Research Council funded project on Decision Making in Eating Disorders was accepted for dissemination as one of the six top abstracts submitted to the Eating Disorders Research Society international conference, 2020. What a huge privledge. Oh how I would have loved to have delivered this talk in the sunshine in Sitges, Spain as planned. In fact, it would have been my little baby boy’s first trip abroad. Unfortunately this ideal scenario was scuppered by the pandemic, but I was still able to speak about our findings as the conference ran online.

This work focused on what we learnt about how decision making skills develop over time during childhood and into adolescence in people who then go on to show eating disorder symptoms in adolescence.

The data used in our models was from 11,303 participants in the Millennium Cohort Study. When they were 11, these boys and girls completed a computerised neuropsychological assessment called the Cambridge Gambling Task designed to measure risk taking and decision making outside a learning context. The participants completed this task again at age 14.

When they were 14, they also responded to questions about how satisfied they were with their body, whether they were intending to lose weight, whether they had restricted their dietary intake to influence their shape or weight, whether they had used driven exercise to influence their shape or weight and their actual height and weight were also recorded.

We built models to understand whether decision making skills develop in the same way over time between the ages of 11 and 14 in those who reported body dissatisfaction, endorsed the intention to lose weight, who were actively restricting their dietary intake and using driven exercise to influence their shape/weight and who were significantly under/overweight according to the UK90 Growth Charts at age 14

What did we find?

Decision making is an executive functioning skill involving the selection of adaptive/advantageous thoughts/actions. This skill is supported by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum. Decision making typically follows a J-shaped developmental trajectory, declining from late childhood into early adolescence and improving in mid adolescence and into early adulthood. However, our analyses showed that one component of decision making, risk taking, improved less between the ages of 11 and 14 in those showing signs of eating disorder symptoms at age 14.

What does this mean?

These findings suggest a neurodevelopmental aetiology for eating disorders - they are not a lifestyle choice, but rather reflect differences in the way decision making develops. Now we know this to be the case, we’ll work on development a tool to support the development of decision making skills in children, with the aim of reducing their later risk of eating disorder symptoms.

Want to know more?

You can watch my talk on this research here

If you’d like a copy, the slides are here

Amy Harrison

I am a clinical scientist and work for UCL and the NHS

https://www.dramykharrison.com