Empirical evidence for cognitive subgroups in body dysmorphic disorder.

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Understanding cognitive functioning in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is limited due to small sample sizes and restricted cognitive domain assessments.
• Previous research presents inconsistent findings regarding cognition in BDD, suggesting potential cognitive heterogeneity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively examine the cognitive profile of individuals with BDD across eight distinct cognitive domains.
• To investigate the existence of distinct cognitive subgroups within the BDD population.

Main Methods:

• Compared cognitive performance in 65 BDD patients and 70 healthy controls across inhibition/flexibility, working memory, processing speed, reasoning, learning, attention, and social cognition.
• Employed hierarchical clustering analysis on the cognitive data of the BDD group to identify potential subgroups.

Main Results:

• BDD patients exhibited significantly poorer cognitive functioning than controls in most domains, excluding attention/vigilance and social cognition.
• Cluster analysis revealed two subgroups: one with broadly intact cognition (72.3%) and another with broadly impaired cognition (27.7%).
• These cognitive subgroups did not significantly differ in clinical or sociodemographic characteristics.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive functioning in BDD is characterized by heterogeneity rather than uniform deficits.
• The identified subgroups suggest that broadly impaired cognition in a subset of individuals may account for group-level differences.
• The dissociation between cognitive profiles and clinical features has implications for understanding BDD etiology.