D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Brain & Mental Health Laboratory, Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia; Obsessive, Compulsive, and Anxiety Spectrum Research Program, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Obsessive, Compulsive, and Anxiety Spectrum Research Program, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Neuroimage Clin. 2018 Apr 4;19:82-89. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2018.04.002. eCollection 2018.
Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit abnormal neural responses when they experience particular emotions or when they evaluate stimuli with emotional value. Whether these brain responses are sufficiently distinctive to discriminate between OCD patients and healthy controls is unknown. The present study is the first to investigate the discriminative power of multivariate pattern analysis of regional fMRI responses to moral and non-moral emotions.
To accomplish this goal, we performed a searchlight-based multivariate pattern analysis to unveil brain regions that could discriminate 18 OCD patients from 18 matched healthy controls during provoked guilt, disgust, compassion, and anger. We also investigated the existence of distinctive neural patterns while combining those four emotions (herein termed analysis).
We found that different frontostriatal regions discriminated OCD patients from controls based on individual emotional experiences. Most notably, the left nucleus accumbens (NAcc) discriminated OCD patients from controls during both disgust and the multiemotion analysis. Among other regions, the angular gyrus responses to anger and the lingual and the middle temporal gyri in the multi-emotion analysis were highly discriminant between samples. Additional BOLD analyses supported the directionality of these findings.
In line with previous studies, differential activity in regions beyond the frontostriatal circuitry differentiates OCD from healthy volunteers. The finding that the response of the left NAcc to different basic and moral emotions is highly discriminative for a diagnosis of OCD confirms current pathophysiological models and points to new venues of research.
强迫症（OCD）患者在体验特定情绪或评估具有情绪价值的刺激时，表现出异常的神经反应。这些大脑反应是否足以区分 OCD 患者和健康对照组尚不清楚。本研究首次探讨了基于 fMRI 区域的多元模式分析对道德和非道德情绪的辨别能力。
为了实现这一目标，我们进行了基于搜索光的多元模式分析，以揭示在诱发内疚、厌恶、同情和愤怒时，能够区分 18 名 OCD 患者和 18 名匹配的健康对照组的大脑区域。我们还研究了在结合这四种情绪时（本文称为分析）是否存在独特的神经模式。
我们发现，不同的额-纹状体区域可以根据个体的情绪体验来区分 OCD 患者和对照组。最值得注意的是，左侧伏隔核（NAcc）在厌恶和多情绪分析中区分了 OCD 患者和对照组。在其他区域中，愤怒时的角回、多情绪分析中的舌回和中颞回的反应在样本之间具有高度的辨别力。额外的 BOLD 分析支持了这些发现的方向性。
与之前的研究一致，额-纹状体回路以外的区域的差异活动区分了 OCD 患者和健康志愿者。左 NAcc 对不同的基本和道德情绪的反应高度区分 OCD 的诊断，这证实了当前的病理生理学模型，并指出了新的研究方向。
