title: Dysfunctional Activation and Brain Network Profiles in Youth with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Focus on the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate during Working Memory.
abstract: Brain network dysfunction is emerging as a central biomarker of interest in psychiatry, in large part, because psychiatric conditions are increasingly seen as disconnection syndromes. Understanding dysfunctional brain network profiles in task-active states provides important information on network engagement in an experimental context. This in turn may be predictive of many of the cognitive and behavioral deficits associated with complex behavioral phenotypes. Here we investigated brain network profiles in youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), contrasting them with a group of age-comparable controls. Network interactions were assessed during simple working memory: in particular, we focused on the modulation by the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) of cortical, striatal, and thalamic regions. The focus on the dACC was motivated by its hypothesized role in the pathophysiology of OCD. However, its task-active network signatures have not been investigated before. Network interactions were modeled using psychophysiological interaction, a simple directional model of seed to target brain interactions. Our results indicate that OCD is characterized by significantly increased dACC modulation of cortical, striatal, and thalamic targets during working memory, and that this aberrant increase in OCD patients is maintained regardless of working memory demand. The results constitute compelling evidence of dysfunctional brain network interactions in OCD and suggest that these interactions may be related to a combination of network inefficiencies and dACC hyper-activity that has been associated with the phenotype.
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine , Detroit, MI , USA.
authors: Vaibhav A
authors: VA
authors: Diwadkar
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine , Detroit, MI , USA.
authors: Ashley
authors: A
authors: Burgess
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine , Detroit, MI , USA.
authors: Ella
authors: E
authors: Hong
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine , Detroit, MI , USA.
authors: Carrie
authors: C
authors: Rix
authors: Department of Psychiatry, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto , Toronto, ON , Canada.
authors: Paul D
authors: PD
authors: Arnold
authors: Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI , USA.
authors: Gregory L
authors: GL
authors: Hanna
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Brain Imaging Research Division, Wayne State University School of Medicine , Detroit, MI , USA.
authors: David R
authors: DR
authors: Rosenberg
keywords: dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; fMRI; network analysis; obsessive-compulsive disorder; working memory