Switching between internally and externally focused attention in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Abnormal visual...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involves difficulty disengaging from internal distressing thoughts.
• This core feature may impair processing of external information that contradicts fears.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate attentional state transitions in OCD using a novel task.
• To examine how internal focus impacts external information processing in OCD patients.

Main Methods:

• An attention switching task differentiating internally focused (IF) and externally focused (EF) states.
• OCD patients and controls performed IF (imagining events) and EF (Stroop task) states, followed by a target detection (TD) task.
• fMRI measured brain activation and functional connectivity during the TD task.

Main Results:

• OCD patients made more errors in the TD task after negative IF compared to controls.
• Reduced occipital cortex, thalamus, and putamen activation was observed in OCD patients post-negative IF.
• Hypoactivation in the inferior occipital cortex was specific to negative IF, with increased connectivity to prefrontal cortex.

Conclusions:

• OCD is associated with impaired visual processing of external stimuli following negative internal focus.
• Findings suggest a specific deficit in transitioning attention away from negative internal states.
• Future OCD treatments could target the modulation of attentional state transitions.