Abnormalities of internally generated saccades in obsessive-compulsive disorder

We aimed to utilize tests of saccadic function to investigate whether cognitive abnormalities in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) arise from a dysfunction of inhibitory processes or whether they reflect a more general difficulty in guiding behaviour on the basis of an internal representation of task goal.

Twelve patients with OCD and 12 matched controls performed a visually-guided saccade task, a volitional prosaccade task and an antisaccade task. The latency and gain of saccades was compared between groups for the three saccade tasks. The number of antisaccade errors was also calculated and compared between groups.

There was no difference for antisaccade error rates between the groups. The latency of visually guided saccades did not differ between groups, however the latency of both volitional prosaccades and antisaccades was significantly slower in the patients with OCD than in controls. The difference in latency between volitional prosacades and antisaccades, however, was equal between groups.

These results suggest that patients with OCD have an abnormality in guiding behaviour on the basis of an internal representation of the task goal, rather than a problem with inhibiting reflexive behaviour.