Probing implicit learning in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Moderating role of medication on the weather prediction task

Kelmendi, Benjamin; Adams, Thomas G.; Jakubovski, Ewgeni; Hawkins, Keith; Coric, Vladimir; Pittenger, Christopher

doi:10.1016/j.jocrd.2016.03.003

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Different dimensions of OCD symptomatology were found to be associated with abnormalities in distinct components of the fronto-striatal circuitry ( 12 ) and, with regard to implicit learning, with differential activations of the striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex during the SRT in OCD participants ( 21 ). In addition, given that a previous study ( 9 ) suggests a subtle deficit in implicit learning in unmedicated patients with OCD, which may be mitigated by pharmacotherapy, the inclusion of participants with OCD being on psychotropic medication might have influenced our findings with respect to their performance and neural activity during the PCL task. Therefore, future studies should include unmedicated participants with OCD in a replication study of the present findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The hypothesis of a recruitment of the medial temporal lobe in OCD participants might explain inconsistent findings regarding implicit learning performance in OCD participants, with some indicating a deficit [e.g., Ref. ( 6 , 9 )] and others not [e.g., Ref. ( 18 , 19 )].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cognitive ability to build these associations relies on implicit information processing. Several studies have suggested that participants with OCD show a general deficit in implicit learning of probabilistic associations between cues and outcomes ( 5 – 9 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, behavioral studies of implicit learning in OCD participants have produced mixed results. Several studies found deficits in implicit learning in OCD participants ( 5 – 9 ), whereas other studies showed that individuals with OCD did not differ from healthy controls in their implicit learning performance ( 18 ), or even showed a better performance than healthy controls ( 19 ). To better understand these diverging results, it may be important to understand the neurobiological correlates of impaired and preserved implicit learning in OCD participants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Neural Correlates of Probabilistic Classification Learning in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Pilot Study

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individuals suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been found to show deficits in implicitly learning probabilistic associations between events. Neuroimaging studies have associated these implicit learning deficits in OCD individuals with aberrant activation of the striatal system. Recent behavioral studies have highlighted that probabilistic classification learning (PCL) deficits in OCD individuals only occur in a disorder-specific context, while PCL remains intact in a neutral context. The neural correlates of implicit learning in an OCD-specific context, however, have not yet been investigated. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a neutral (prediction of weather) and an OCD-specific variant (prediction of a virus epidemic) of a PCL paradigm, we assessed brain activity associated with implicit learning processes in 10 participants with OCD and 10 matched healthy controls. Regions of interest (ROIs) were the striatum and the medial temporal lobe. ROI analyses revealed a significantly higher activity in the bilateral putamen and the left hippocampus of OCD participants as compared to healthy controls during both PCL tasks. The group differences could partly be subsumed under a group × task interaction effect with OCD participants showing a significantly higher activity than healthy controls in the left putamen and the left hippocampus in the OCD-specific task variant only. These results suggest a compensation of aberrant striatal activity by an augmented engagement of the explicit memory system particularly in a disorder-relevant context in OCD participants.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Neural Correlates of Probabilistic Classification Learning in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Pilot Study

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We used a slightly modified version of the event-related rewarded implicit learning task previously used by our group to investigate reward processing in autistic and TD boys 9 ; this task is based on the well-established Weather Prediction Task [50][51][52][53][54] and was chosen to improve comparability with our prior study 9 . Participants completed several practice trials prior to the scan to ensure they understood task instructions.…”

Section: Fmri Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural responsivity to social rewards in autistic female youth

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Autism is hypothesized to be in part driven by a reduced sensitivity to the inherently rewarding nature of social stimuli. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated that autistic males do indeed display reduced neural activity to social rewards, but it is unknown whether this finding extends to autistic females, particularly as behavioral evidence suggests that affected females may not exhibit the same reduction in social motivation as their male peers. We therefore used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine social reward processing during an instrumental implicit learning task in 154 children and adolescents (ages 8-17): 39 autistic girls, 43 autistic boys, 33 typically developing girls, and 39 typically developing boys. We found that autistic girls displayed increased activity to socially rewarding stimuli, including greater activity in the nucleus accumbens relative to autistic boys, as well as greater activity in lateral frontal cortices and the anterior insula compared with typically developing girls. These results demonstrate for the first time that autistic girls do not exhibit the same reduction in activity within social reward systems as autistic boys. Instead, autistic girls display increased neural activation to such stimuli in areas related to reward processing and salience detection. Our findings indicate that a reduced sensitivity to social rewards, as assessed with a rewarded instrumental implicit learning task, does not generalize to affected female youth and highlight the importance of studying potential sex differences in autism to improve our understanding of the condition and its heterogeneity.

show abstract