A study of attention networks in the patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the attention network in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).Methods 31 GAD patients,31 OCD patients and 30 healthy controls (HC) were tested with attention network test.Results There were significant differences in the main effects with respect to the alerting network(15.87±5.24,26.77±4.33,34.87±3.47) (F=4.619,P=0.012)) and the executive network(114.84±9.64,122.45±5.57,96.57±5.45) (F=3.388,P=0.038) among the OCD,GAD and HC groups.The three groups did significantly differ in RT of the attention network (F=19.808,P=0.000).For the HC group,there was significant main effects with respect to cue conditions(F=29.699,P=0.000).There was a significant correlation between the executive network and Hamilton anxiety scale (r=0.351) and also a significantly negative correlation between the alerting network and Hamilton depression scale (r=-0.267).Conclusion There are attention network damages in patients with OCD and GAD,which may be involved in the impairment of emotion.