Loading...
The excessive habits seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can primarily be viewed either as dysfunctions in purposive behavior (i.e., exuberance of behaviors intended to ward off feared consequences) or as arising from impairments in the formation of automatic habits. To investigate the psychoneurobiological processes underlying avoidance habits, investigators examined 37 patients with OCD and 33 healthy controls matched for age, sex, education, handedness, and smoking.
Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while being trained on a shock avoidance task. They received electric shocks after seeing a warning (conditioned stimulus [CS]) and could avoid the shocks by pressing a bar after the CS. Avoidance habits were…