Greater Insula White Matter Fiber Connectivity in Women Recovered from Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is a severe psychiatric disorder associated with reduced drive to eat. Altered taste-reward circuit white matter fiber organization in anorexia nervosa after recovery could indicate a biological marker that alters the normal motivation to eat. Women recovered from restricting-type anorexia (Recovered AN, n = 24, age = 30.3 ± 8.1 years) and healthy controls (n = 24, age = 27.4 ± 6.3 years) underwent diffusion weighted imaging of the brain. Probabilistic tractography analyses calculated brain white matter connectivity (streamlines) as an estimate of fiber connections in taste-reward-related white matter tracts, and microstructural integrity (fractional anisotropy, FA) was assessed using tract-based spatial statistics. Recovered AN showed significantly (range P<0.05-0.001, Bonferroni corrected) greater white matter connectivity between bilateral insula regions and ventral striatum, left insula and middle orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and right insula projecting to gyrus rectus and medial OFC. Duration of illness predicted connectivity of tracts projecting from the insula to ventral striatum and OFC. Microstructural integrity was lower in Recovered AN in most insula white matter tracts, as was whole-brain FA in parts of the anterior corona radiata, external capsule, and cerebellum (P<0.05, family-wise error-corrected). This study indicates higher structural white matter connectivity, an estimate of fibers connections, in anorexia after recovery in tracts that connect taste-reward processing regions. Greater connectivity together with less-fiber integrity could indicate altered neural activity between those regions, which could interfere with normal food-reward circuit function. Correlations between connectivity and illness duration suggest that connectivity could be a marker for illness severity. Whether greater connectivity can predict prognosis of the disorder requires further study.