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Central and peripheral physiological responses to decision making in hoarding disorder
Hannah C Levy1, Adam J Naples2, Sarah Collett1
1Anxiety Disorders Center, Institute of Living, 200 Retreat Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106, USA.
Summary
Neurobiological models of hoarding disorder (HD) were not supported by this study. Error-related negativity (ERN) and psychophysiological responses did not differ between individuals with HD and control groups during simulated discarding tasks.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Hoarding disorder (HD) involves persistent difficulty discarding possessions, leading to clutter.
- A biphasic neurobiological model proposes blunted resting/neutral state nervous system activity and exaggerated discarding-related activity in HD.
- This study investigated neural and psychophysiological correlates of decision-making in HD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare error-related negativity (ERN) and psychophysiological responses during neutral and discarding decisions in individuals with HD, anxiety disorder controls, and healthy controls.
- To examine resting-state alpha asymmetry between HD and control groups.
- To test the predictions of the biphasic neurobiological model of HD.
Main Methods:
- Compared ERN and psychophysiological measures (skin conductance, heart rate variability, end-tidal CO2) during Go/No Go tasks.
- Tasks involved neutral shape selection and simulated discarding of newspaper images.
- Resting-state alpha asymmetry was measured.
- Participants included 26 individuals with HD, 37 with anxiety disorders, and 28 healthy controls.
Main Results:
- All participants exhibited increased frontal negativity upon error commission.
- No significant group differences were found in ERN or psychophysiological measures.
- Resting-state alpha asymmetry did not differ between the hoarding disorder and control groups.
Conclusions:
- The findings do not support the proposed biphasic neurobiological model regarding ERN and psychophysiological differences in simulated discarding tasks.
- Null results may stem from methodological limitations of using Go/No Go tasks for discarding simulations.
- Further research with ecologically valid discarding tasks is needed to validate or refute the model.
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