DISTORTED CONTROL OF STRESS INFORMATION-PROCESSING IN EATING DISORDERS

The hypothalamus plays important roles in integration of behavioral, endocrine and neural informations which control homeostatsis in response to changes in external and internal environment. The patients with eating disorders like refractory obesity or anorexia nervosa show not only abnormal eating behavior but deviated humoral levels, which originate from disturbance of information processing under stress loading. Feeding control system in human beings involves the cerebral association cortex which receives external information as sensory perception. The time judgment and the Stroop Color Word tests are the cognitive estimation methods which reflect higher cortical processing. Accuracy of the patients with eating disorders shown in those tests revealed impairment of cognitive functions when deprived of external modulating time or color cues. Histaminergic neurons in the brain are activated under physical stress loading. This activation contributes to the coordination in homeostatic control of feeding behavior and thermoregulation when ambient temperature is abnormally elevated or lowered as a physical stress.