Anxiety fear and disgust conditioning in people with eating disorders
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Anxiety fear conditioning in people with eating disorders
IRAS ID
238055
Contact name
Valentina Cardi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
There is growing research interest to examine the basic mechanism underlying psychiatric disorders. Eating disorders have been viewed as a form of anxiety as fear of fatness can lead to extreme dietary restriction. In addition, people with eating disorders often have comorbid anxiety. The fear conditioning procedure is a behavioural paradigm of how we learn to fear specific stimuli. In its simplest form, it involves the repeated pairing of a non-threatening stimulus with a threatening stimulus. This continues until a fear response to the non-threatening stimulus is learnt. The fear conditioning procedure has been examined extensively in people with anxiety disorders. Differences in rates of learning between anxious and non-anxious populations have been found. We aim to examine the procedure in people with eating disorders.
In this project, we will recruit 40 patients with anorexia nervosa from the research database held at King's College London and patients who are currently receiving care at the inpatient and outpatient eating disorder units at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation. The fear conditioning procedure will be administered using a mobile phone app on two occasions. The session will begin with a series of self-reported questionnaires. Participants will then be presented with a series of images whereby some will be paired with a scream. They will be asked to rate “how much do you expect to hear a scream?” during every image presentation. The task will be 15 minutes in duration.
The specific fear conditioning procedure used in this study has been successfully tested in the general population and individuals with anxiety. We aim to pilot the procedure as a model of the processes underlying the development and maintenance of anxiety in people with anorexia nervosa. Once established, this fear conditioning procedure will be administered to a larger clinical sample.
REC name
London - London Bridge Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0121
Date of REC Opinion
26 Feb 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion