Aberrant error processing in relation to symptom severity in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A multimodal neuroimaging...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involves persistent, maladaptive repetitive behaviors despite negative feedback.
• Behavioral rigidity in OCD may stem from impaired use of error outcomes to adapt responses.
• Understanding neural mechanisms of error processing and adjustment is crucial for OCD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if behavioral rigidity in OCD is linked to impaired neural adjustments following errors.
• To correlate neural responses to errors and post-error adjustments with OCD symptom severity.
• To examine the cingulum bundle's integrity using diffusion tensor imaging.

Main Methods:

• Multimodal neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG, DTI) during an antisaccade task.
• Measurement of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activation and error-related negativity (ERN).
• Assessment of default network activity changes in post-error trials and cingulum bundle fractional anisotropy (FA).

Main Results:

• OCD patients exhibited normal error-related ACC activation and ERN.
• Abnormal post-error adjustments were observed in OCD patients, with increased default network activation, including the rostral ACC (rACC).
• Greater rACC activation correlated with OCD symptom severity, and increased FA was found in white matter underlying rACC.

Conclusions:

• Impaired adaptive neural adjustments to behavioral outcomes may underlie OCD symptoms.
• The rACC's role in abnormal adjustments suggests difficulty suppressing emotional responses to errors.
• Enhanced structural connectivity in the rACC paralimbic region may contribute to OCD-related impairments.