Positron emission tomography was employed to contrast the brain
activation pattern in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to
that of matched control subjects while they performed an implicit learning
task. Although patients and control subjects evidenced comparable learning,
imaging data from control subjects indicated bilateral inferior striatal
activation, whereas OCD patients did not activate right or left inferior
striatum and instead showed bilateral medial temporal activation. The
findings further implicate corticostriatal dysfunction in
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Furthermore, when OCD patients are
confronted with stimuli that call for recruitment of corticostriatal
systems, they instead appear to access brain regions normally associated
with explicit (conscious) information processing.
Abstract Teaser