Selective impairment in visual perception of biological motion in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with a variety of well-documented cognitive deficits such as deficits in memory and executive functioning, but little is known about basic perceptual concomitants of OCD. This study investigated global, configural processing in OCD using dynamic (moving) and static stimuli with minimal demands on cognitive function. Twenty OCD patients and 16 age- and education-matched healthy control subjects were tested on four perceptual tasks: two motion tasks involved detection and discrimination of human activity portrayed by point-light animations ("biological" motion). The other two tasks involved detection of coherent, translational motion defined by random-dot cinematograms and detection of static global shape defined by spatially distributed contours. OCD patients exhibited impaired performance on biological motion tasks; in contrast, their performance on tasks of coherent motion detection and global form perception were comparable to those of healthy controls. These results indicate that OCD patients have a specific deficit in perceiving biological motion signals, whereas their perception of non-biological coherent motion and static global shape is intact. Because efficient social interactions depend on accurate and rapid perception of subtle socially relevant cues, deficits in biological motion perception may compromise social functioning in people with OCD.

Metacognitive impairments extend perceptual decision making weaknesses in compulsivity

“…Such an impairment was previously reported 28,29 , and our finding of an increased stimulus strength in high compulsives (see results) pointed towards a similar impairment.…”

“…generally lower or higher ratings) and is independent of variability in perceptual decision making that can directly influence confidence ratings. The latter is of particular importance as OCD patients are reported to suffer from perceptual decision making difficulties 28,29 . By combining a computational model of metacognition together with experimentally controlled task difficulty, here we circumvent these limitations to single out contributing factors that selectively influence perceptual and metacognitive abilities 26 .…”

Brain activation of the defensive and appetitive survival systems in obsessive compulsive disorder

“…Emotional activation has been found to be associated with the enhancement of visual perception (Phelps et al 2006), particularly in the ventral visual stream (Wright et al 2004), with evidence of an increased amygdala -visual cortex (extra striate and inferotemporal) functional connectivity for both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli (Sabatinelli et al 2005;Wendt et al 2011). In particular, several studies have revealed the existence of visual processing impairments in OCD, such as visual memory/visuomotor speed set shifting (Rampacher et al 2010), body posture discrimination (Shin et al 2013), and perception of biological movement (Kim et al 2008). In the present study, we observed that the activation of the defensive system was not associated with activity of the visual system, suggesting that patients with OCD are more sensible to threatening stimuli, rather to its physical characteristics.…”

“…In accordance, evidence of specific visual processing deficits in OCD, namely in terms of visual organization (Rampacher et al 2010), and perception of biological movement (Kim et al 2008) has been documented, and suggesting alterations at the visual processing level.…”

The relationship between social anxiety and the perception of depth-ambiguous biological motion stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability

“…For example, using fMRI, researchers have found that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (an anxiety disorder characterized by serious anxiety and difficulty inhibiting thoughts) differ from healthy controls in terms of the brain areas they recruit while observing biological motion (Jung et al, 2009). Other researchers have found that individuals with obsessivecompulsive disorder perform poorer than healthy controls on biological motion perception tasks, but not on other non-biological motion perceptual tasks (Kim et al, 2008). Our study is the first to demonstrate that inhibitory ability may mediate the relationship between anxiety and the perception of biological motion stimuli, thus providing a rationale for the recruitment of other brain regions by more anxious populations.…”