Longitudinal changes in network connectivity in OCD are affected by reaction-action certainty
Poster No:
2081
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
John Kopchick1, Joseph Mansour2, Phillip Easter2, David Rosenberg2, Jeffrey Stanley1, Vaibhav Diwadkar2
Institutions:
1Wayne State University, Department of Psychiatry, Detroit, MI, 2Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), typically emerges in youth, and symptom expression is known to change with age (Fernandez de la Cruz et al., 2013). OCD is characterized by the experience of intrusive thoughts or feelings (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors, typically motor responses (compulsions) enacted to relieve distress. These behaviors may impact patients' ability to deal with relationships between perception, reaction and action (Friedman et al., 2017; Meram et al., 2021). Yet, little is known about how certainty in these relationships impact longitudinal changes in task-evoked connectomics. Here, we used a perception – reaction – action task (that relies on the motor system) to understand longitudinal connectomic changes in OCD youth. Participants were required to tap their fingers ("action") in response to a visual probe ("perception – reaction"). The uncertainty of the cycle was manipulated by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between successive presented stimuli, ranging from fixed SOA ("periodic", i.e. low uncertainty) to randomly varied SOA ("pseudo random", i.e. high uncertainty).
Methods:
Thirteen OCD youth provided informed consent for fMRI (Siemens Verio 3T). Two conditions (unknown to participants) were used to manipulate uncertainty. During the low uncertainty, the probe was presented at periodic intervals (1s SOA). During high uncertainty, the probe was presented at pseudorandom intervals (SOA sampled from a distribution with a mean of 1s +- sd 0.5s, minimum SOA, 200 ms). Data were collected in each participant approximately 12 weeks apart (Time1, Time2). The fMRI data from both time points were preprocessed using conventional methods (SPM12). Connectomic analyses were conducted on time series extracted from 246 cerebral parcels (Fan et al., 2016)(30,135 unique pairs of regions). Undirected functional connectivity (uFC) based on zero-lag correlations was estimated under each experimental condition (low uncertainty and high uncertainty) from both time points before computing difference uFC matrices (Time2 – Time1). From the mean difference matrix across participants, the most significant (p<.01) difference scores from the distribution of the 30,135 values were identified.
Results:
Figure 1 depicts longitudinal effects under each condition. Each chord signifies a significant longitudinal change in uFC (Blue: Decrease in uFC; Red: Increase in uFC). As seen, levels of certainty evoke a clear dissociation in longitudinal changes in uFC: Under low uncertainty there is a cross cerebral decrease in uFC with heavy representation of regions in the frontal, temporal and visual cortices, the medial temporal lobe and the thalamus. Conversely, under high uncertainty, there is a cross-cerebral increase in uFC, with heavy representation of motor regions (pre- and post-central gyrus) and the thalamus.
Conclusions:
Certainty in the perception – action cycle is proposed to be related to predictive processing (Friston, 2019) that in turn evokes the flexible recruitment of brain network hierarchies (Muzik and Diwadkar, 2023). Low uncertainty in the perception – action evokes low predictive complexity, whereas high uncertainty evokes high predictive complexity. We suspect that the divergent longitudinal impact of these conditions on cross-cerebral coupling reflect distinct functional demands of each condition. Thus, over time, the OCD brain becomes less sensitive to predictive certainty (leading to a loss of cross-cerebral coupling). However, simultaneously the OCD brain becomes more sensitized by task complexity, leading to demand-mediated increases in cross-cerebral coupling. While these interpretations are highly speculative, they nevertheless are an attempt at recapitulating the compelling and dissociating impacts of perception – action certainty on longitudinal brain network profiles in OCD.
Lifespan Development:
Early life, Adolescence, Aging
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural) 2
Motor Behavior:
Visuo-Motor Functions 1
Keywords:
Obessive Compulsive Disorder
Other - Longitudinal
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Fernandez de la Cruz, L., Micali, N., Roberts, S., Turner, C., Nakatani, E., Heyman, I., Mataix-Cols, D., 2013. Are the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder temporally stable in children/adolescents? A prospective naturalistic study. Psychiatry research 209(2), 196-201.
Friedman, A., Burgess, A., Ramaseshan, K., Easter, P., Khatib, D., Chowdury, A., Arnold, P.D., Hanna, G.L., Rosenberg, D.R., Diwadkar, V.A., 2017. Brain network dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive disorder induced by simple uni-manual behavior: The role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging 260, 6-15.
Friston, K.J., 2019. Waves of prediction. PLoS Biol 17(10), e3000426.
Meram, T.D., Chowdury, A., Easter, P., Attisha, T., Kallabat, E., Hanna, G.L., Arnold, P., Rosenberg, D.R., Diwadkar, V.A., 2021. Evoking network profiles of the dorsal anterior cingulate in youth with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder during motor control and working memory. J Psychiatr Res 132, 72-83.
Muzik, O., Diwadkar, V.A., 2023. Depth and hierarchies in the predictive brain: From reaction to action. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci, e1664.