In a study published in Psychological Medicine, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at USC revealed that there is a notable difference in the brain structure of boys and girls with binge eating disorders. In the study, the researchers identified 38 boys and 33 girls who had a diagnosis of binge eating disorder from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study.

The team evaluated the grey matter density in the brains of the nine- and 10-year-olds in the study via voxel-based morphometry, a neuroimaging technique. They observed that girls with binge eating disorders had elevated grey matter density in several parts of the brain known to be connected to impulse control and binge eating disorder symptoms. However, boys with binge eating disorders did not have elevated gray matter density in these areas.

As a result, they concluded that the increased grey matter density in binge eating disorder girls suggested that a critical brain maturational process known as synaptic pruning may be altered or delayed in these girls. According to the studys author, the study′s findings suggested that any neurobiological hypothesis of binge eating disorder should be stratified by gender.