Preliminary research suggests that the cognitive of patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) improve over the course of inpatient treatment. The psychological and physiological factors that are associated with improvement of cognitive abilities one year after discharge will be determined. Funding of this project will also provide the resources needed to organize a database of patients with eating disorders to be recruited for subsequent research projects. The primary hypothesis that cognitive abilities measured one year after discharge will be significantly associated with the severity of AN symptoms. If AN severity worsens from post-treatment levels, the gains made during inpatient treatment will decay; if AN severity improves, the gains made during inpatient treatment will be further enhanced. Other predictors of cognitive improvement will be evaluated. Specifically, we will look at baseline and post-treatment levels of depression and anxiety, obsessive measures, and general functioning as they relate to neuropsychological performance at baseline, post-treatment, and follow- up. The results will allow the stability of cognitive performances to be determined, and allow the relationship between neuropsychological test results and the core AN psychopathology to be clearly defined. Such findings could provide to be quite clinically useful. Likewise, practitioners should know whether these skills stabilize after hospitalization or if they require more frequent monitoring. Such information also informs our basic understanding of how the brain recovers from the effects of starvation.
| Mikos, Ania E; McDowell, Bradley D; Moser, David J et al. (2008) Stability of neuropsychological performance in anorexia nervosa. Ann Clin Psychiatry 20:9-13 |
