Exaggerated frontoparietal control over cognitive effort-based decision-making in young women with anorexia nervosa.

ABSTRACT: Effortful tasks are generally experienced as costly, but the value of work varies greatly across individuals and populations. While most mental health conditions are characterized by amotivation and effort avoidance, individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) persistently engage in effortful behaviors that most people find unrewarding (food restriction, excessive exercise). Current models of AN differentially attribute such extreme weight-control behavior to altered reward responding and exaggerated cognitive control. In a novel test of these theoretical accounts, we employed an established cognitive effort discounting paradigm in combination with fMRI in young acutely underweight female patients with AN (n = 48) and age-matched healthy controls (HC; n = 48). Contrary to the hypothesis that in

SUBMITTER: King JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11835750 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature