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OCD as behavioral addiction and the reward process : A systematic review

Studies have shown that aberrant activity in some brain regions involved in the pathology of OCD overlaps similarly with individuals with addiction disorders. The reduced anxiety following a compulsion together with findings of diminished activation in the striatum during reward anticipation proposes a view of OCD being a behavior addiction. To investigate if there are consistent results across studies that support this view a systematic search of the literature was conducted. The keywords in the final search string used were: Obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD, reward, risk, functional MRI, MRI, fMRI. Databases used for the search were Web of Science and PubMed. The inclusion criteria were studies that compared the neural activity during the anticipation phase of reward between OCD patients and healthy controls. The intervention and brain imaging used in the included studies were the monetary incentive delay task and fMRI. The main data extracted were the alterations in the striatum. Four studies were included in this review with inconsistent results. Three studies did not find any significant difference between OCD and healthy controls and therefore the findings in principle did not support the view of OCD being a behavior addiction. However, differences in study design between studies could be an explanation for the conflicting findings.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:his-20174
Date January 2021
CreatorsBudajeva, Snezjana
PublisherHögskolan i Skövde, Institutionen för biovetenskap
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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