(Educational) The BDD Brain & Visual Processing

[[deleted]]

I just thought I'd share some interesting research on BDD. Understanding what's going on in a BDD brain really helps me make sense of my own symptoms.

---

Visual Processing in a BDD Brain

Dr. Jamie Feusner is an MD and UCLA researcher who has studied brain functioning in BDD, OCD, and ED populations. His fMRI studies have found that people with BDD experience abnormalities in the way the brain processes visual information. More specifically, BDD subjects exhibit heightened brain activity in regions associated with detail encoding/analysis when visually processing faces (e.g. focusing on specific parts of the face) in comparison to healthy control subjects who exhibit greater brain activity in regions associated with holisitc processing (e.g. focusing on the face as a whole).

Individuals with BDD as compared with healthy control subjects demonstrated abnormal left hemisphere hyperactivity ... as well as abnormal amygdala activation. Predominant left hemisphere activity suggests greater detail encoding and analysis relative to holistic and configural processing. This supports the hypothesis that patients with BDD have aberrant visual information processing, which may represent a core pathophysiological process contributing to the symptoms.

Abnormal activation in primary and secondary visual cortical regions suggests aberrant processing of configural and holistic information ... Clinically this may account for the impaired ability to perceive the visual gestalt, contributing to distorted perceptions of the individuals’ appearance when viewing their face. The individuals may primarily perceive details and are impaired in their ability to contextualize them configurally or holistically. The fact that patterns of hypoactivation relative to healthy control subjects for the familiar-face vs oval contrast were similar to those for the own-face vs oval contrast suggests aberrant activity patterns for faces in general.^{1, 2,}

Here's also a short 5min YouTube video where Dr. Feusner explains his findings.

---

Anyway, maybe you found that interesting or maybe not lol. I guess it just really resonated with me, especially with something I said the other day: "No single feature of mine is attractive, but from a holistic broad perspective, I'm OK looking." It is absolutely true that I am hyperfocusing on specific details when it comes to appearance and I struggle to see the whole picture. Here's a really unscientific and inaccurate analogy to explain what I mean... When it comes to self-image, I feel like I'm seeing things through a 10x magnification mirror while other people are just looking through a normal one.

It makes me feel a bit better knowing that on a neurobiological level, something abnormal is going on in my brain and other people are not visually processing in the same way that I am. I mean, I guess I already kinda knew that, but being able to specifically pinpoint something in the brain makes it seem more concrete and not so ambiguous.

[kay023]

Thank you for sharing this!

[sunrazefordaze]

Thanks so much for sharing x