Inverse Association Between Resting-State Putamen Activity and Iowa Gambling Task Performance in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Control Subjects

Abstract

BackgroundSymptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been conceptualized as manifestations of decision-making deficits. Patients with OCD exhibit impairment during the decision-making process, as assessed by the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). This impairment is independent of clinical severity and disease progression. However, the association between the decision-making deficit and resting-state brain activity of patients with OCD has not been examined.MethodsFifty unmedicated patients with OCD and 55 matched control subjects completed IGT. Resting-state brain activity was examined using the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFFs). fALFF analysis focused on the slow-4 and 5 bands. Group comparisons were performed to determine the association between IGT performance and fALFFs.ResultsThere was a significant group difference in the association between the IGT total net score and slow-4 fALFFs in the left putamen (voxel height threshold of p < 0.001; cluster size threshold of p < 0.05; family wise error-corrected). Higher putamen slow-4 fALFFs were correlated with lower IGT scores for OCD patients (r = −0.485; p < 0.0005) and higher IGT scores for control subjects (r = 0.402; p < 0.005). There was no group difference in the association between the IGT total net score and slow-5 fALFFs.ConclusionsThese findings in unmedicated patients demonstrate the importance of resting-state putamen activity for decision-making deficit associated with OCD, as measured by IGT. The inverse correlation may be explained by the hypersensitive response of the putamen in patients with OCD.

Dorsal and ventral fronto-amygdala networks underlie risky decision-making in age-related cognitive decline

“…Although a number of neuroimaging studies have examined task-related brain activity during the IGT [ 10 , 20 , 33 ], resting-state fMRI allows the study of brain networks in the absence of explicit tasks which would provide significant advantages in understanding age-related alterations in decision making under uncertainty. To our knowledge, there have been limited researches examining the relationships between IGT performance and functional connectivity/regional activity during the resting state [ 13 , 34 ], and only one study examined the bran networks (i.e., default mode network and fronto-parietal network) in both resting-state and IGT-related scans [ 35 ]. Therefore, the current study combined resting-state and task-related fMRI data to reveal the connectivity and brain activation within the fronto-amygdala network.…”