title: Neural correlates of emotional response inhibition in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A preliminary study.
abstract: Failure to inhibit recurrent anxiety-provoking thoughts is a central symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Neuroimaging studies suggest inhibitory control and disgust processing abnormalities in patients with OCD. However, the emotional modulation of response inhibition deficits in OCD and their neural correlates remain to be elucidated. For this preliminary study we administered an adapted affective response inhibition paradigm, an emotional go/no-go task, during fMRI to characterize the neural systems underlying disgust-related and fear-related inhibition in nine adults with contamination-type OCD compared to ten matched healthy controls. Participants with OCD had significantly greater anterior insula cortex activation when inhibiting responses to both disgusting (bilateral), and fearful (right-sided) images, compared to healthy controls. They also had increased activation in several frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, but there was no evidence of amygdala activation in OCD or healthy participants and no significant between-group differences in performance on the emotion go/no-go task. The anterior insula appears to play a central role in the emotional modulation of response inhibition in contamination-type OCD to both fearful and disgusting images. The insula may serve as a potential treatment target for contamination-type OCD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA; Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: heather.berlin@mssm.edu.
authors.forename: Heather A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Berlin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Kurt P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Turetzky
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rosenthal
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA; Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Goodman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000523:psychology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods
keywords: Contamination; Disgust; Emotion; Inhibition; Insula; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; fMRI