Action-Monitoring Dysfunction in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

Evidence suggests that a hyperactive frontal-striatal-thalamic-frontal circuit is associated with the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but there is little agreement about the function of the exaggerated activity. We report electrophysiological evidence suggesting that part of this system monitors events and generates error signals when the events conflict with an individual's internal standards or goals. Nine individuals with OCD and 9 age-, sex-, and education-matched control participants performed a speeded reaction time task. The error-related negativity, an event-related brain potential component that reflects action-monitoring processes, was enhanced in the individuals with OCD. The magnitude of this enhancement correlated with symptom severity. Dipole modeling suggested that the locus of the enhancement corresponded to medial frontal regions, possibly the anterior cingulate cortex.

Intact error monitoring in combat Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder

“…If we make mistakes, the ability to detect and correct our errors helps us stay on track. Altered self-monitoring is a core feature of many psychiatric disorders, with deficient monitoring seen in schizophrenia (Frith and Done, 1989;Turken et al, 2003), and excessive monitoring in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) (Salkovskis, 1999;Gehring et al, 2000). Numerous studies have implicated the medial frontal cortex (MFC), especially the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), in this crucial executive control function (Carter et al, 2001;Rushworth et al 2004;Posner et al 2007;Ridderinkhof et al 2007;Ullsperger et al, 2014).…”

“…Individuals with schizophrenia show reductions in the ERN (Alain et al, 2002;Mathalon et al, 2002), whereas those with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and OCD show increases (Gehring et al, 2000;Endrass and Ullsperger, 2014;Xiao et al, 2011). The findings in major depressive disorder are mixed, with some studies showing increases in ERN amplitude (Chiu and Deldin, 2007;Holmes and Pizzagalli, 2008;Aarts et al, 2013) and others decreases (Ruchsow et al, 2006) or no difference (Compton et al, 2008;Schrijvers et al, 2009).…”

In search of specificity: “Not just right experiences” and obsessive–compulsive symptoms in non-clinical and clinical Italian individuals

“…Dysregulated activity in frontostriatal system is proposed to underlie the enhanced response monitoring often observed in patients with OCD (e.g., Brieter et al, 1996;Gehring, Himle, & Nisenson, 2000) and may manifest as persistent "error signals" erroneously prompting the individual to (fruitless) corrective action (Maltby, Tolin, Worhunsky, O'Keefe & Kiehl, 2005;Schwartz, 1999;Szechtman & Woody, 2004;Van Veen & Carter, 2002).…”

Effects of time pressure on verbal self-monitoring: An ERP study

“…The neural basis of error monitoring has become a key issue in cognitive neuroscience due to its importance to the aforementioned cognitive skills. A better understanding of its working may offer new insights into the dysfunctions of self-monitoring seen in a range of clinical conditions such as schizophrenia , opiate addicts (Forman et al, 2004), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Gehring et al, 2000). Progress in identifying the functional characteristics of the error monitoring system has been mainly achieved through the study of an electrophysiological index thought to be associated with error processing, i.e., Error-Related Negativity (ERN; Falkenstein et al, 1991;Gehring et al, 1993).…”