Impaired Cognitive Plasticity and Goal-directed Control in Adolescent Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

Overview

Journal Psychol Med

Publisher Cambridge University Press

Specialty Psychology

Date 2018 Jan 23

PMID 29353562

Citations 29

Authors

Julia Gottwald

Sanne de Wit

Annemieke M Apergis-Schoute

Sharon Morein-Zamir

Muzaffer Kaser

Francesca Cormack

Akeem Sule

Winifred Limmer

Anna Conway Morris

Trevor W Robbins

Barbara J Sahakian

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Youths with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience severe distress and impaired functioning at school and at home. Critical cognitive domains for daily functioning and academic success are learning, memory, cognitive flexibility and goal-directed behavioural control. Performance in these important domains among teenagers with OCD was therefore investigated in this study.

Methods: A total of 36 youths with OCD and 36 healthy comparison subjects completed two memory tasks: Pattern Recognition Memory (PRM) and Paired Associates Learning (PAL); as well as the Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift (IED) task to quantitatively gauge learning as well as cognitive flexibility. A subset of 30 participants of each group also completed a Differential-Outcome Effect (DOE) task followed by a Slips-of-Action Task, designed to assess the balance of goal-directed and habitual behavioural control.

Results: Adolescent OCD patients showed a significant learning and memory impairment. Compared with healthy comparison subjects, they made more errors on PRM and PAL and in the first stages of IED involving discrimination and reversal learning. Patients were also slower to learn about contingencies in the DOE task and were less sensitive to outcome devaluation, suggesting an impairment in goal-directed control.

Conclusions: This study advances the characterization of juvenile OCD. Patients demonstrated impairments in all learning and memory tasks. We also provide the first experimental evidence of impaired goal-directed control and lack of cognitive plasticity early in the development of OCD. The extent to which the impairments in these cognitive domains impact academic performance and symptom development warrants further investigation.

Citing Articles

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Resting-State Functional Connectivity Alterations in Drug-Naive Adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

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A hierarchical reinforcement learning model explains individual differences in attentional set shifting.

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Tong K, Fu X, Hoo N, Kean Mun L, Vassiliu C, Langley C Psychol Med. 2024; :1-7.

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Late development of OCD-like phenotypes in Dlgap1 knockout mice.

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