Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Signal Attenuation as a Rat Model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Published on: January 9, 2015
Reward-based spatial learning in unmedicated adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder
Rachel Marsh1, Gregory Z Tau, Zhishun Wang
1From the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York; the Division of Translational Imaging, the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York; the Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Tex.; the Institute for the Developing Mind, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles; and the Division of Clinical Therapeutics in the Department of Psychiatry, the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York.
Adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show altered brain activity in reward pathways during spatial learning. Unlike healthy individuals, they over-rely on the hippocampus and do not activate reward circuitry when expectations are violated.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neuropsychiatric condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors.
- Reward-based learning and spatial navigation involve complex neural circuitry, including mesolimbic and striatal areas.
- Dysfunction in these brain regions has been implicated in various psychiatric disorders, but their specific role in OCD remains under investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the functioning of mesolimbic and striatal areas during reward-based spatial learning in unmedicated adults with OCD.
- To compare neural activity patterns between individuals with OCD and healthy controls during a virtual navigation task.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response was measured in 33 unmedicated adults with OCD and 33 healthy controls.
- Participants completed a reward-based spatial learning task involving navigation in a virtual radial maze using extramaze cues.
- A control condition involved pseudorandom reward allocation to prevent learning and assess responses to unexpected rewards.
Main Results:
- Both groups successfully learned to navigate the maze, but significant group differences emerged in neural activity within mesolimbic and striatal regions.
- During navigation, the OCD group showed increased activation in the left posterior hippocampus compared to controls.
- Participants with OCD exhibited reduced activation in the left ventral putamen and amygdala when anticipating rewards and in the left hippocampus, amygdala, and ventral putamen when receiving unexpected rewards. Signal decreased relative to baseline in these regions for the OCD group.
- Activation in these reward-related areas was inversely associated with doubt/checking symptom severity in the OCD group.
Conclusions:
- Unmedicated adults with OCD demonstrate abnormal recruitment of mesolimbic and ventral striatal circuitry during reward-based spatial learning.
- Healthy individuals activated reward circuitry upon violation of reward expectations, whereas the OCD group did not, instead showing over-reliance on the posterior hippocampus.
- Findings suggest potential alterations in the dopaminergic innervation of reward circuitry and warrant further investigation into anterior/posterior hippocampal dysfunction in OCD.
