Rare Diseases Symptoms Automatic Extraction

Weighing the stigma of weight: An fMRI study of neural reactivity to the pain of obese individuals.

[cushing syndrome]

Explicit negative attitudes and blameful beliefs (e.g. poor diet, laziness) towards obese individuals are well documented and are pervasive even among health professionals. Here we sought to determine whether obesity stigma is reflected in a fundamental feature of intersubjectivity namely the automatic neural resonance with others' affective experiences. During fMRI, normal-weight female participants observed short clips depicting normal-weight (NW) and obese (Ob) models experiencing pain. Importantly, participants believed that half of the Ob were overweight due to a hormonal disorder (HormOb) and ignored the cause of obesity of the remaining models (Unknown obese models; UnkOb). Analyses of hemodynamic responses showed reduced activity to the pain of Ob compared to that of NW in areas associated with pain processing and early visual processing. The comparison between the two Ob conditions revealed a further decrease of activity to HormOb's pain compared to UnkOb's (and NW) pain in the right inferior frontal gyrus, an area associated with emotional resonance. Our study demonstrates that stigma for obese individuals can be observed at implicit levels, and that it is modulated by knowledge concerning the etiology of obesity, with the seemingly surprising result that obesity due to disease may result in greater stigmatization. Moreover, the perceived similarity with the models and the ambivalent emotion of pity may index biased brain responses to obese individuals' pain. The study highlights a possibly important neural link between resonance with the pain of others and obesity stigma.

Diseases presenting "pain" symptom

  • achondroplasia
  • acute rheumatic fever
  • adrenal incidentaloma
  • adrenomyeloneuropathy
  • aniridia
  • aromatase deficiency
  • carcinoma of the gallbladder
  • cholangiocarcinoma
  • coats disease
  • congenital diaphragmatic hernia
  • congenital toxoplasmosis
  • cushing syndrome
  • cutaneous mastocytosis
  • cystinuria
  • dedifferentiated liposarcoma
  • dentin dysplasia
  • dracunculiasis
  • dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa
  • epidermolysis bullosa simplex
  • erdheim-chester disease
  • erythropoietic protoporphyria
  • esophageal adenocarcinoma
  • esophageal carcinoma
  • esophageal squamous cell carcinoma
  • fabry disease
  • familial mediterranean fever
  • focal myositis
  • hirschsprung disease
  • hodgkin lymphoma, classical
  • holt-oram syndrome
  • junctional epidermolysis bullosa
  • kabuki syndrome
  • kindler syndrome
  • lamellar ichthyosis
  • liposarcoma
  • locked-in syndrome
  • lymphangioleiomyomatosis
  • malignant atrophic papulosis
  • neuralgic amyotrophy
  • oligodontia
  • oral submucous fibrosis
  • papillon-lefèvre syndrome
  • phenylketonuria
  • pleomorphic liposarcoma
  • primary hyperoxaluria type 1
  • proteus syndrome
  • pyomyositis
  • scrub typhus
  • sneddon syndrome
  • systemic capillary leak syndrome
  • thoracic outlet syndrome
  • trochlear dysplasia
  • typhoid
  • von hippel-lindau disease
  • waldenström macroglobulinemia
  • well-differentiated liposarcoma
  • wolf-hirschhorn syndrome

This symptom has already been validated