Harmonic expectancy violations elicit not-just-right-experiences: A paradigm for investigating obsessive-compulsive characteristics?

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)-like symptoms are commonly associated with sensations of incompleteness and not-just-right experiences (NJRE). Although NJRE have gained much attention in recent years, most studies have not gone beyond a description of their phenomenology and prevalence also in healthy adults. We applied a validated harmonic expectancy violation paradigm to experimentally investigate NJRE evoked by deviant auditory perceptions. We assessed reaction times (RT) to harmonic and disharmonic chord sequences as well as their emotional appraisal in 64 healthy young adults. The participants clearly indicated disharmonic chord sequences as sounding not-just-right and incomplete and rated them as unpleasant, arousing, and irritating. The RT to disharmonic chord sequences was significantly shorter than the RT to harmonic chord sequences. This effect tended to be greater in those participants who reported stronger general experiences of incompleteness as an underlying core dimension of OCD-like symptoms. In addition, general experience of incompleteness was correlated to the difference between RT to harmonic and that to disharmonic chord sequences, indicating that the intensity of general experience of incompleteness was associated with a more readily activated processing of the deviant auditory perceptions.

An empirical investigation of incompleteness in a large clinical sample of obsessive compulsive disorder

“…Knowledge about INC in OCD has also been explored via related concepts, such as “Not Just Right Experiences” (NJREs) (Coles, Frost, Heimberg, & Rheaume, 2003), lack of feared consequences in OCD (Foa, Abramowitz, Franklin, & Kozak, 1999), perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) characteristics (Ecker et al, 2013), sensory phenomena (Buse et al, 2015; Summers, Fitch, & Cougle, 2014), and tic-like experiences (Miguel et al, 2000; Neal & Cavanna, 2013). In the DSM-IV field trial, for example, Foa et al (Foa & Kozak, 1995) found that as many as 40% of OCD patients lacked an identifiable feared consequence driving their compulsions, as would otherwise be expected based on HA conceptualizations of OCD.…”

Neural correlates of processing harmonic expectancy violations in children and adolescents with OCD

“…Many patients with OCD report about sensations of incompleteness or something being “not-just-right” accompanying their symptoms ( Leckman et al, 1994 , Prado et al, 2007 , Summerfeldt, 2004 ). Harmonic expectancy violations by disharmonic chord sequences provoke feelings in healthy controls that are related to those NJRE reported in the context of OC symptomatology ( Buse et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Both, the hippocampus and the parahippocampal gyrus, are activated during the perception of unpleasant music and strongly deactivated in response to pleasant music stimuli ( Koelsch et al, 2006 ). In regard of our healthy controls we had corresponding findings since hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus were deactivated during harmonic chords, which are usually perceived as more pleasant ( Buse et al, 2015 ), and activated during disharmonic chords, which are usually perceived as more unpleasant ( Buse et al, 2015 ). Interestingly, we found no differences between harmonic and disharmonic chords in hippocampal and parahippocampal activation in patients with OCD.…”

“…Listeners brought up in a western culture are familiar with these regularities and detect violations of the expected harmonic structure ( Koelsch, 2005 , Koelsch et al, 2000 ). In a previous study it was shown that the violation of music-syntactic regularities by disharmonic chord sequences provokes feelings in healthy controls that are similar to NJRE reported in the context of obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptomatology ( Buse et al, 2015 ).…”

A Systematic Review of Scientific Studies and Case Reports on Music and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

“…It was only when he was introduced to various behavioural techniques-thought-stopping, exposure and response prevention, and Morita therapy-that he self-reported a slight improvement in musical obsessions and a significant reduction in other OC features [57]. Buse et al [60] investigated whether harmonic expectancy violations caused incitement of "not-just-right experiences" and if the emotional appraisal of those violations and the duration necessary to notice them was related to "general experiences of incompleteness". The response time (RT) to the disharmonic chord was lower than to the harmonic sequences, and the experience of incompleteness correlated with the presence of OC symptoms [60].…”