TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluating effect of symptoms heterogeneity on decision-making ability in obsessive-compulsive disorder
AU - Martoni, Riccardo Maria
AU - Brombin, Chiara
AU - Nonis, Alessandro
AU - Salgari, Giulia Carlotta
AU - Buongiorno, Angela
AU - Cavallini, Maria Cristina
AU - Galimberti, Elisa
AU - Bellodi, Laura
PY - 2015/7/1
Y1 - 2015/7/1
N2 - Aims Despite having a univocal definition, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) shows a remarkably phenotypic heterogeneity. The published reports show impaired decision-making in OCD patients, using tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). We wanted to verify the hypothesis of an IGT worse performance in a large sample of OCD patients and healthy control (HC) subjects and to examine the relation between neuropsychological performance in IGT and the OCD symptoms heterogeneity. Methods Binary data from the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale collected on a large sample of OCD patients were analyzed using a multidimensional item response theory model to explore the underlying structure of data, thus revealing latent factors. Factor scores were categorized into quartiles. Then, for each factor, we identified patients respectively with the highest versus lowest score. We evaluated whether symptom dimensions affect the probability of a correct answer over time generalized, during IGT performance, fitting a generalized linear mixed model. Results We found a general deficit in ambiguous decision-making in OCD compared to HC. Moreover, our findings suggested that OCD symptoms heterogeneity affects decision-making learning abilities during IGT. In fact, while 'Symmetry' and 'Washing' patients showed a learning curve during the task, other subgroups did not. Conclusions Our study confirmed previous findings suggesting that OCD is characterized by a deficit in decision-making under uncertainty. Moreover, our study gave evidence about biological specificity for each symptom dimension in OCD. Data were discussed in the context of the somatic marker hypothesis, which was hypothesized to be reduced in OCD patients.
AB - Aims Despite having a univocal definition, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) shows a remarkably phenotypic heterogeneity. The published reports show impaired decision-making in OCD patients, using tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). We wanted to verify the hypothesis of an IGT worse performance in a large sample of OCD patients and healthy control (HC) subjects and to examine the relation between neuropsychological performance in IGT and the OCD symptoms heterogeneity. Methods Binary data from the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale collected on a large sample of OCD patients were analyzed using a multidimensional item response theory model to explore the underlying structure of data, thus revealing latent factors. Factor scores were categorized into quartiles. Then, for each factor, we identified patients respectively with the highest versus lowest score. We evaluated whether symptom dimensions affect the probability of a correct answer over time generalized, during IGT performance, fitting a generalized linear mixed model. Results We found a general deficit in ambiguous decision-making in OCD compared to HC. Moreover, our findings suggested that OCD symptoms heterogeneity affects decision-making learning abilities during IGT. In fact, while 'Symmetry' and 'Washing' patients showed a learning curve during the task, other subgroups did not. Conclusions Our study confirmed previous findings suggesting that OCD is characterized by a deficit in decision-making under uncertainty. Moreover, our study gave evidence about biological specificity for each symptom dimension in OCD. Data were discussed in the context of the somatic marker hypothesis, which was hypothesized to be reduced in OCD patients.
KW - decision-making
KW - learning curve
KW - multidimensional item response theory
KW - obsessive-compulsive
KW - symptoms heterogeneity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84935748856&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84935748856&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/pcn.12264
DO - 10.1111/pcn.12264
M3 - Article
C2 - 25522816
AN - SCOPUS:84935748856
VL - 69
SP - 402
EP - 410
JO - Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
JF - Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
SN - 1323-1316
IS - 7
ER -