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

Abstract

It has been suggested that patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit enhanced awareness of embedded stimulus patterns as well as enhanced allocation of attention towards unexpected stimuli. Our study aimed at investigating these OCD characteristics by running the harmonic expectancy violation paradigm in 21 boys with OCD and 29 healthy controls matched for age, gender and IQ during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. Each trial consisted of a chord sequence in which the first four chords induced a strong expectancy for a harmonic chord at the next position. In 70% of the trials the fifth chord fulfilled this expectancy (harmonic condition), while in 30% the expectancy was violated (disharmonic condition). Overall, the harmonic condition elicited blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activation in the auditory cortex, while during the disharmonic condition the precuneus, the auditory cortex, the medial frontal gyrus, the premotor cortex, the lingual gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus were activated. In a cluster extending from the right superior temporal gyrus to the inferior frontal gyrus, boys with OCD exhibited increased activation compared to healthy controls in the harmonic condition and decreased activation in the disharmonic condition. Our findings might indicate that patients with OCD are excessively engaged in processing the implicit structure embedded in music stimuli, but they speak against the suggestion that OCD is associated with a misallocation of attention towards the processing of unexpected stimuli.

An Integrated Assessment of Changes in Brain Structure and Function of the Insula Resulting from an Intensive Mindfulness-Based Intervention

“…The posterior insula increased in rs-FC with both the left MTG/STG and right vlPFC. These structurally connected regions have been repeatedly implicated in auditory processing and are thought to comprise a network involved in the detection of novel auditory information (Petrides & Pandya 2002;Plakke & Romanski 2014;Rauschecker & Scott 2009;Schönwiesner et al 2007;Buse & Roessner 2016;Kiehl et al 2001).…”

“…The posterior insula is a region of particular interest to the present research because of its implication in auditory and interoceptive processing by both structural and functional neuroimaging research (Bamiou, Musiek, & Luxon 2003;Remedios, Logothetis, & Kayser 2009;Flynn 1999) and due to the previously demonstrated effect of mindfulness training on the activation and functional connectivity of this region (Kilpatrick et al 2011;Farb et al 2012;Kirk, Gu, Harvey, Fonagy, & Montague 2014). Changes in cortical thickness of the posterior insula may lead to changes in auditory processing, and the posterior insula may interact with other regions implicated in auditory processing, such as the left middle/superior temporal gyrus (MTG/STG) and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) in a network involved in the detection of novel auditory information (Petrides & Pandya 2002;Plakke & Romanski 2014;Rauschecker & Scott 2009;Schönwiesner et al 2007;Buse & Roessner 2016;Kiehl, Laurens, Duty, Forster, & Liddle 2001). Various forms of meditation are associated with activity in the insula as well as somatomotor cortex, the primary cortical site of tactile information processing (Fox et al 2016).…”

Sensory Habituation as a Shared Mechanism for Sensory Over-Responsivity and Obsessive–Compulsive Symptoms

“…Although the sensitivity of the high OCS to the AV stimuli was higher when compared to the low OCS, overall they did not show more physiological sensitivity. These findings could be due to an attention bias toward stimuli that would normally be processed without conscious awareness (Buse and Roessner, 2016) or a result of a slow habituation process (Hallett, 2015). In a recent review by Thielen and Gillebert (2019) a few factors that influence sensory sensitivity are described.…”

“…Audition is the most commonly reported bothersome modality among individuals with SOR (Royeen and Fortune, 1990;Ben-Sasson et al, 2009). Although other sensory modalities, such as tactile and olfactory, were found to be involved in OCD (e.g., Güçlü et al, 2015), our study focused on the auditory modality because it is often observed in OCD (Buhlmann et al, 2007;Buse and Roessner, 2016) and it is feasible to quantify in an experimental design. Auditory SOR can be expressed by sensitivity to specific sounds (e.g., breathing and electronic devices), background noises (e.g., air conditioner and people talking), or sensitivity to the intensity of the sound (e.g., loud tones and noisy environments).…”

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

“…An fMRI-study conducted by Buse and Roessner [61] found that patients with OCD exhibited more brain activation than healthy controls in harmonic conditions and lower activation in disharmonic conditions. Therefore, these findings might support the relationship between OCD and an attention-misallocation to auditory stimulus that would ordinarily be processed unconsciously [61].…”