An Investigation of Neuropsychological Functioning in Women Recovered from Anorexia Nervosa

Abstract

Research has shown that anorexia nervosa (AN) is characterized by structural and functional brain abnormalities. A distinct pattern of neuropsychological functioning has been observed in women with AN, characterized by poor performance on tasks assessing visuospatial and executive functioning, and normal-to-superior performance on verbal fluency tasks, compared with healthy women. This study sought to explore this phenomenon in women recovered from AN, using neuropsychological measures associated various brain areas. It was predicted that recovered AN women would perform more poorly than controls on tasks assessing right parietal, right frontal, and left parietal functioning, and similar or superior performance on a left frontal task. Recovered AN women outperformed healthy controls on neuropsychological measures, suggesting that they do not experience relative impairment in neuropsychological functioning. Whether these findings are the result of improvements in cognitive functioning in women recovered from AN or from methodological issues in the current study remains unclear.