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Updated: Jun 29, 2025
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Signal Attenuation as a Rat Model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Published on: January 9, 2015
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Neurocomputational model of compulsivity: deviating from an uncertain goal-directed system.
Taekwan Kim1,2,3, Sang Wan Lee2,3,4, Silvia Kyungjin Lho5
1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Seoul National University College of Natural Sciences, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea.
Brain : a Journal of Neurology
|April 8, 2024
Summary
Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients show a stronger preference for habitual behaviors due to impaired decision-making arbitration in the fronto-striatal circuit. This dysfunction, marked by reduced prefrontal control over the putamen, correlates with increased compulsivity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is theorized to involve an imbalance between goal-directed and habitual systems.
- Research has yet to clarify how arbitration between these systems contributes to compulsions in OCD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate disruptions in the fronto-striatal circuit's arbitration process in OCD patients.
- To examine if these disruptions lead to imbalanced decision-making and compulsions.
Main Methods:
- Functional MRI scans were used on 30 OCD patients and 30 healthy controls performing a two-step Markov decision task.
- A neurocomputational model assessed uncertainty-based arbitration, focusing on the inferior frontal gyrus gating the putamen.
- Group differences in neural uncertainty estimates and fronto-striatal coupling were analyzed.
Main Results:
- OCD patients exhibited a stronger preference for habitual systems, linked to a more uncertain goal-directed system.
- Patients showed hypoactivity in the inferior frontal gyrus and weaker ventrolateral prefronto-putamen coupling.
- This reduced fronto-striatal connectivity correlated with higher compulsivity scores.
Conclusions:
- Attenuated top-down control of the putamen by the prefrontal arbitrator underlies compulsivity in OCD.
- Findings suggest impaired arbitration within the fronto-striatal circuit contributes to decision-making deficits in OCD.
- Enhancing fronto-striatal connectivity may offer a neurotherapeutic avenue for OCD treatment.
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