The Effect Of Emotion Processing On Obsessive-compulsive Disorder's Inhibitory Control Deficits

Along with the cognitive neuroscience, the executive function in OCD has become one of most attractive research fields. Mounting evidence concerning OCDs points to abnormal functioning of the orbitofrontal cortices. The orbitofrontal region is typically associated with motor suppression and response inhibition, and most of the functions reside at the intersection of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral regulation. This research examined the inhibitory control deficits both at behavioral and cognitive levels in patients with OCD by Go-Nogo paradigm and stroop paradigm, and has discussed the effect of emotion processing on OCD' s inhibitory control deficits by emotional stroop paradigm. This research revealed: (1) No difference was found between the OCD subjects and the healthy subjects on the reaction time of the 'Go' stimuli. For the 'Nogo' stimuli, OCD subjects made a higher percentage of commission errors than the healthy subjects. Within the OCD group, more errors were made for the Blue '0' than the Pink 'E' , indicating that the Blue '0' may involve more cognitive demands. These results suggest that there are behavioral inhibitory control deficits in OCD subjects. (2)For the baseline conditions of the Stroop test, the data analyse showed that there was no difference between the OCD and healthy subjects for the percentage of the errors and the reaction time. However, this experiment revealed that OCD subjects made more errors than the healthy controls on the interference trials, and OCD subjects displayed slower reaction time for the interference trials than the healthy controls. These results suggest that there are cognitive inhibitory control deficits in OCD subjects. (3)0CD subjects displayed slower reaction time on the words relative to depression anxiety and washing hands than the healthy subjects, and there are no differences on the positive and neutral words. In addition, Washers responded more slowly on the washing words and made more errors than the healthy subjects. These suggest that OCD subjects may display attentional bias on the materials relative to their current emotion and symptoms.