Increased decision thresholds enhance information gathering performance in juvenile Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Abstract

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can be described as cautious and hesitant, manifesting an excessive indecisiveness that hinders efficient decision making. However, excess caution in decision making may also lead to better performance in specific situations where the cost of extended deliberation is small. We compared 16 juvenile OCD patients with 16 matched healthy controls whilst they performed a sequential information gathering task under different external cost conditions. We found that patients with OCD outperformed healthy controls, winning significantly more points. The groups also differed in the number of draws required prior to committing to a decision, but not in decision accuracy. A novel Bayesian computational model revealed that subjective sampling costs arose as a non-linear function of sampling, closely resembling an escalating urgency signal. Group difference in performance was best explained by a later emergence of these subjective costs in the OCD group, also evident in an increased decision threshold. Our findings present a novel computational model and suggest that enhanced information gathering in OCD can be accounted for by a higher decision threshold arising out of an altered perception of costs that, in some specific contexts, may be advantageous.

Separate mesocortical and mesolimbic pathways encode effort and reward learning signals

“…We used the total scores as a dependent variable in a fivefold crossvalidated regression (cf. 84,97). To assess whether apathy was more closely linked to dmPFC or VS activation, we used the activation in the given ROI (using mean activation at P < 0.05 FWE ROI, same as in previous analyses), including both effort and reward prediction error signals at the time of outcome.…”

The Cost of Appearing Suspicious? Information Gathering in Trust Decisions

“…Our findings might provide a benchmark to uncover social value computation aberrations in psychiatric disorders. Some psychiatric disorders can be characterized by biases in information sampling, such as insufficient information gathering in addiction 30 , asymmetric weighting of negative evidence in depression 31 , and impaired information sampling cost signals associated with compulsivity 32,33 . Importantly, specific impairments in the ability to model the moral character of others or to respond to social signals are central to a range of psychiatric disorders, including borderline personality disorder and autism spectrum disorder 34,35 .…”

Noradrenaline modulates decision urgency during sequential information gathering

“…Such behaviour is found in patients (Fear and Healy, 1997;Moutoussis et al, 2011;e.g., Dudley et al, 2016), but is also a feature of prodromal states (Rausch et al, 2016) and first-degree relatives (Van Dael et al, 2006). This contrasts with patients diagnosed as having obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who tend to gather more information (Volans, 1976;Fear and Healy, 1997;Pélissier and O'Connor, 2002;Voon et al, 2016;Hauser et al, 2017cHauser et al, , 2017b, although not ubiquitously so (Chamberlain et al, 2007;Jacobsen et al, 2012;Grassi et al, 2015).…”

“…The neurocognitive control mechanisms that drive these effects is unknown. Using Bayesian computational modelling, we recently showed that one key contributor is a decision urgency signal that promotes timely decisions (Hauser et al, 2017c(Hauser et al, , 2017b. The neural processes that modulate such urgency signals in sequential information gathering remain unknown.…”