Neuropsychological correlates of decision making in patients with bulimia nervosa

In addition to the core psychopathology of bulimia nervosa (BN), patients with BN often show impulsive behavior that has been related to decision making deficits in other patient groups, such as individuals with anorexia nervosa and pathological gamblers. However, it remains unclear whether BN patients also show difficulties in decision making. In this study, 14 patients with BN and 14 healthy comparison subjects, matched for age, gender, education, body mass index, and intelligence, were examined with the Game of Dice Task (M. Brand, E. Fujiwara, et al., 2005), a gambling task that has fixed winning probabilities and explicit rules for gains and losses, as well as with a neuropsychological test battery and personality questionnaires. On the task, the patients with BN chose the disadvantageous alternatives more frequently than did the comparison subjects. Performance on the Game of Dice Task was related to executive functioning but not to other neuropsychological functions, personality, or disease-specific variables in the BN group. Thus, in patients with BN, decision making abnormalities and executive reductions can be demonstrated and might be neuropsychological correlates of the patients' dysfunctional everyday-life decision making behavior. Neurocognitive functions should be considered in the treatment of BN.