Enhanced avoidance habits in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric condition that typically manifests in compulsive urges to perform irrational or excessive avoidance behaviors. A recent account has suggested that compulsivity in OCD might arise from excessive stimulus-response habit formation, rendering behavior insensitive to goal value. We tested if OCD patients have a bias toward habits using a novel shock avoidance task. To explore how habits, as a putative model of compulsivity, might relate to obsessions and anxiety, we recorded measures of contingency knowledge, explicit fear, and physiological arousal.

Methods

Twenty-five OCD patients and 25 control subjects completed a shock avoidance task designed to induce habits through overtraining, which were identified using goa

SUBMITTER: Gillan CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3988923 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature