Body dysmorphic disorder is a disabling but often
misunderstood psychiatric condition in which people perceive themselves to be
disfigured and ugly, even though they look normal to others. New research at
UCLA shows that these individuals have abnormalities in the underlying
connections in their brains.
Dr. Jamie Feusner, the study's senior author and a UCLA
associate professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues report that individuals
with BDD have, in essence, global "bad wiring" in their brains — that
is, there are abnormal network-wiring patterns across the brain as a whole.