Event‐related potentials in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder

Abstract

Twenty-three unmedicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were compared with 12 unmedicated patients with social phobia (SP) and 18 age-matched normal controls (C) using a two-tone auditory oddball event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm. The OCD group showed significantly shorter P300 latencies and shorter N200 latencies for target stimuli than the SP and the C groups. The OCD patients also tended to have greater N200 negativity compared with normal controls. However, there were no significant relationships between these ERP abnormalities in OCD patients and the type or severity of their OCD symptoms. In the mean ERP waveforms, increased N200 negativity for target stimuli, as well as the provocation in the later part of N200 for non-target stimuli, were more commonly observed in the OCD and the SP groups compared with the C group. These results raise the possibility that the shorter N200 and P300 latencies in OCD patients may be an OCD-specific phenomenon that is more closely related to the biological basis for OCD, rather than the characteristics of their OCD symptoms. On the other hand, increased negativity in the N200 region, even for non-target stimuli, may represent the common abnormalities among anxiety disorders.

Neurocognitive Aspects of Tourette Syndrome and Related Disorders

“…The OCD and the GTS+OCD group showed reduced rare-target P300 amplitude, mainly in the right anterior region, but otherwise did not differ significantly from each other. The target P300 amplitude was also negatively correlated with OCD, which confirmed numerous findings reported in OCD (Beech, Ciesielski, & Gordon, 1983;Malloy, Rasmussen, Braden, & Haier, 1989;Miyata et al, 1998;Morault, Guillem, Bourgeois, & Paty, 1998;Morault, Bourgeois, Laville, Bensch, & Paty, 1997;Oades, Dittmann-Balcar, Schepker, Eggers, & Zerbin, 1996;Sanz, Molina, Martin-Loeches, Calcedo, & Rubia, 2001;Towey et al, 1994). Conversely, participants suffering from GTS showed larger target P300 amplitude, positively correlated with tic frequency.…”

Influence of comorbid obsessive-compulsive symptoms on brain event-related potentials in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

“…Wolach and Pratt, 2001). In previous studies, a reduction in P300 amplitude has been consistently observed in GTS (Johannes et al, 1997(Johannes et al, , 2001b and in OCD (Kim et al, 2003;Miyata et al, 1998;Sanz et al, 2001;Towey et al, 1994), pointing towards a decrease in memory updating processes in both disorders. Nevertheless, these P300 patterns were elicited in slightly different experimental procedures, so nuancing homogeneous interpretation of their functional significance across groups.…”

“…Nevertheless, these P300 patterns were elicited in slightly different experimental procedures, so nuancing homogeneous interpretation of their functional significance across groups. In GTS, working memory processes have been found to be affected in complex attentional performance while in OCD, anomalies appeared non specifically across a wide spectrum of cognitive demands (Kim et al, 2003;Mavrogiorgou et al, 2002;Miyata et al, 1998;Morault et al, 1998;Sanz et al, 2001;Towey et al, 1994).…”

Neural time course of threat-related attentional bias and interference in panic and obsessive–compulsive disorders

“…While ERP differences between OCD and HCs are consistently reported, specific findings vary, and OCD-specific deficits have yet to be identified. In oddball tasks, differences in OCD relative to HCs include both larger (Miyata et al, 1998;Towey et al, 1990;Towey et al, 1993) and smaller N2 amplitudes (Morault, Bourgeois, Laville, Bensch, & Paty, 1997), interpreted as a misallocation of cognitive resources in OCD (Towey, et al, 1993). Increased N1 latency has been reported, interpreted to indicate possible impairments in evaluating the significance of the stimuli (Di Russo, Zaccara, Ragazzoni, & Pallanti, 2000;Morault, et al, 1997).…”