Common Neural Networks Between ocd and Behavioural Addictions: Is ocd a Behavioral Addiction?

Abstract

The stereotypical portrait of an obsessive–compulsive patient is an excessively self-controlled, risk aversive individual that acts in order to avoid potential loss or punishments. Although this portrait fits well with several clinical studies showing increased harm-avoidance in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), more recent clinical, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies challenged this idea and described a different portrait of OCD, showing several commonalities between OCD and addictions such as impulsivity, reward dysfunction and impaired decision-making. The results of these studies conflict with the stereotypical OCD portrait of doubtfulness and risk-aversiveness. In fact, these findings are prototypical for addiction and have led some authors in the last years to view OCD as a behavioral addiction. In our recently published article, we investigated the behavioral addiction model of obsessive (OCD), by assessing three core dimensions of addiction in patients with OCD and healthy participants. Similar to the common findings in addiction, OCD patients demonstrated increased impulsivity, risky decision-making, and biased probabilistic reasoning compared to healthy controls. During the presentation we will discuss the behavioral addiction model of OCD by focusing on common neuropsychological and neurobiological circuitries.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.