Frontal EEG Alpha Activity and Obsessive-compulsive Behaviors in Non-clinical Young Adults: a Pilot Study

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2015 Oct 21

PMID 26483733

Citations 8

Authors

Michael Wong

Erik Z Woody

Louis A Schmidt

Michael Van Ameringen

Noam Soreni

Henry Szechtman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the resting electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha patterns of non-clinical participants who score high on measures of negative affect, such as depression and shyness, are different from those who score low. However, we know relatively little about patterns of resting EEG alpha patterns in a non-clinical sample of individuals with high levels of obsessive-compulsive behaviors indicative of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here we measured resting EEG alpha activity in frontal and parietal regions of non-clinical participants who scored high and low on the Padua-R, a measure of the severity of OCD-related behaviors. We found that participants who scored high on the Padua-R exhibited decreased overall activity in frontal regions relative to individuals who scored low on the measure. We speculate that frontal hypoactivity may be a possible marker and/or index of risk for OCD.

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