Vuillier, L;
Wang, Z;
Hassan, S;
Harrison, A;
Somerville, MP;
He, X;
(2025)
Emotional overload in Bulimia Nervosa: an ERP study of emotion processing and regulation.
Journal of Eating Disorders
, 13
, Article 74. 10.1186/s40337-025-01245-7.
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Abstract
Objective: People with Bulimia Nervosa (BN) self-report difficulties processing and regulating emotions. However, self-reports have been shown to be biased, particularly with people with BN who have difficulties describing their emotions. Self-reports also cannot easily disentangle between early processing and later regulatory stages, so it is not clear whether people with BN really do process their emotions more intensely or whether this is due to the aftermath of regulatory difficulties. This study aimed to use an objective way to measure (1) whether people with BN process their emotions with higher intensity compared to healthy controls (HC) and (2) whether they can successfully implement an emotion regulation strategy called cognitive reappraisal. Methods: We developed a neuroimaging task using electroencephalography to answer these questions, using the Late Positive Potential (LPP) as an objective measure of emotional arousal at the processing and regulatory stages. We tested the task in females with BN (N = 32) and matched HC (N = 35). Results: We found that our BN group showed higher LPP compared to our HC group when viewing emotional pictures, demonstrating increased emotional intensity at the processing stage. We also found that the LPP for reappraisal took longer to get back to baseline for our BN group compared to the maintain condition and our HC group. Discussion: Our results suggest that people with BN process their emotions with higher intensity and may struggle to implement subsequent cognitive reappraisal strategies when affect is high. This has direct implications for clinicians who should be aware that when evoking affect in treatment, people with BN may need greater support in understanding and managing their emotions. Clinicians may also want to offer distress tolerance skills to reduce emotional arousal before suggesting using cognitive reappraisal skills to manage strong emotions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Emotional overload in Bulimia Nervosa: an ERP study of emotion processing and regulation |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40337-025-01245-7 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-025-01245-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Bulimia Nervosa, Eating disorders, Emotion, Emotion processing, Emotion regulation, LPP, Neuroimaging |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208594 |
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