ABSTRACT
Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been demonstrated to be less likely to use spontaneously generated organizational strategies during verbal episodic memory and visuoconstruction tasks. However, whether this organizational deficit is generalizable to other areas of cognitive functioning has not been established. In the present study, we assessed whether adults with OCD are less likely to spontaneously generate organizational strategies during performance of an executive function test, the Self-Ordered Pointing Task (SOPT). Participants included 30 adults with OCD and 24 healthy controls. Groups did not differ with respect to the time to complete or number of errors made on the SOPT. Furthermore, group differences were not observed in the ability to generate organizational strategies or in the specific types of strategies employed to complete the SOPT. These findings indicate that a reduced use of organizational strategies in OCD is not present across all cognitive domains.
Subject(s)
Attention , Memory, Short-Term , Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder/psychology , Pattern Recognition, Visual , Problem Solving , Psychomotor Performance , Verbal Learning , Adult , Concept Formation , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Neuropsychological Tests/statistics & numerical data , Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder/diagnosis , Orientation , Reaction Time , Reference ValuesABSTRACT
Event-related potential (ERP) studies have demonstrated impaired auditory sensory processing in patients with schizophrenia, as reflected in abnormal mismatch negativity (MMN). We sought to extend this finding by evaluating MMN in 13 treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia, and 14 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Subjects responded to infrequent visual stimulation while ignoring binaurally presented auditory tones. The amplitude and topographical pattern of the MMN were analyzed. The control group presented the expected reduction in the amplitude of the MMN from frontal to central and parietal locations. In comparison, the MMN amplitude was not reduced in the treatment-refractory patients, and was largest at the central-posterior electrode location. In addition, patients displayed larger negativities at left frontal, and left- and right-temporal electrode locations than the control subjects. These findings are consistent with pre-attentive abnormalities in treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia.
Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Brain Mapping , Event-Related Potentials, P300/physiology , Evoked Potentials, Auditory/physiology , Frontal Lobe/physiopathology , Schizophrenia/physiopathology , Temporal Lobe/physiopathology , Adult , Analysis of Variance , Antipsychotic Agents/therapeutic use , Drug Resistance , Evoked Potentials, Visual/physiology , Female , Humans , Inpatients , Male , Matched-Pair Analysis , Mental Recall/physiology , Middle Aged , Reaction Time/physiology , Reference Values , Schizophrenia/drug therapy , Severity of Illness Index , Treatment OutcomeABSTRACT
Slowness in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been attributed to intrusive thoughts or meticulousness. Recent research suggests that slowness in OCD may be particularly evident on tests of executive function subserved by frontostriatal circuitry. In the present study, the speed and accuracy of responding on neuropsychological tests of executive functions and psychomotor speed were investigated in 27 non-depressed, unmedicated adults with OCD and 27 healthy controls. The only group difference was that patients took significantly longer to copy a complex geometric design than controls. This finding was unrelated to residual depression or overall OCD symptom severity. Results suggest that slowness in OCD may be most apparent on executive tests requiring self-initiated organizational strategies, consistent with frontostriatal abnormality.
