Anxiety Disorders Center, Institute of Living, 200 Retreat Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106, USA.
Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, 40 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 06510, USA; Center for Brain and Mind Health, Yale School of Medicine, 40 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2024 Nov;205:112437. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2024.112437. Epub 2024 Sep 10.
Individuals with hoarding disorder (HD) have difficulty parting with personal possessions, which leads to the accumulation of excessive clutter. According to a proposed biphasic neurobiological model, HD is characterized by blunted central and peripheral nervous system activity at rest and during neutral (non-discarding) decisions, and exaggerated activity during decision-making about discarding personal possessions. Here, we compared the error-related negativity (ERN) and psychophysiological responses (skin conductance, heart rate and heart rate variability, and end tidal CO) during neutral and discarding-related decisions in 26 individuals with HD, 37 control participants with anxiety disorders, and 28 healthy control participants without psychiatric diagnoses. We also compared alpha asymmetry between the HD and control groups during a baseline resting phase. Participants completed a series of Go/No Go decision-making tasks, one involving choosing certain shapes (neutral task) and the other involving choosing images of newspapers to imaginally "discard" (discarding task). While all participants showed expected increased frontal negativity to commission of an error, contrary to hypotheses, there were no group differences in the ERN or any psychophysiological measures. Alpha asymmetry at rest also did not differ between groups. The findings suggest that the ERN and psychophysiological responses may not differ in individuals with HD during simulated discarding decisions relative to control participants, although the null results may be explained by methodological challenges in using Go/No Go tasks as discarding tasks. Future replication and extension of these results will be needed using ecologically valid discarding tasks.
囤积障碍（HD）患者难以舍弃个人物品，导致过度囤积。根据提出的双相神经生物学模型，HD 的特征是中枢和外周神经系统在休息时和进行中性（不丢弃）决策时活动迟钝，而在做出有关丢弃个人物品的决策时活动过度。在这里，我们比较了 26 名 HD 患者、37 名伴有焦虑障碍的对照参与者和 28 名无精神科诊断的健康对照参与者在中性和与丢弃相关的决策过程中的错误相关负性（ERN）和心理生理反应（皮肤电导、心率和心率变异性以及潮气末 CO）。我们还比较了 HD 组和对照组在基线休息阶段的α不对称性。参与者完成了一系列 Go/No Go 决策任务，一个涉及选择某些形状（中性任务），另一个涉及选择报纸图像进行想象中的“丢弃”（丢弃任务）。虽然所有参与者在犯错误时都表现出预期的额部负性增加，但与假设相反，ERN 或任何心理生理测量在组间均无差异。休息时的α不对称性在组间也没有差异。研究结果表明，在模拟丢弃决策中，与对照组相比，HD 患者的 ERN 和心理生理反应可能没有差异，尽管由于使用 Go/No Go 任务作为丢弃任务存在方法学挑战，因此可能无法解释这些无效结果。需要使用更具生态有效性的丢弃任务来复制和扩展这些结果。
