The inner world of overactive monitoring: neural markers of interoception in OCD

KICHIC, RAFAEL; GARCÍA, ADOLFO M.; CETKOVICH, MARCELO; FITTIPALDI, SOL; SEDEÑO, LUCAS; IBÁÑEZ, AGUSTÍN; YORIS, ADRIÁN; MOSER, JASON; MANES, FACUNDO

Buenos Aires

Encuentro; 20th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness; 2016

Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness

Background: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients typically overmonitor their own behavior, as shown by symptoms of excessive doubt and checking. Although this is well established for the patients? relationship with the external stimuli from the environment, no study has explored their monitoring of internal body signals, a process known to be affected in anxiety-related syndromes. Here, we explored this issue through a cardiac interoception task that measures sensing of heartbeats. Our aim was to explore distinctive behavioral and electrophysiological aspects of internal-cue monitoring in OCD, while examining their specificity to this condition. To this end, we administered a heartbeat detection (HBD) task (with related interoceptive awareness measures) to three matched groups (OCD patients, panic disorder patients, healthy controls) and recorded ongoing modulations of two task-relevant electrophysiological markers: the heart evoked potential (HEP) and the motor potential (MP). Findings: OCD patients behaviorally outperformed controls and anxiety patients in the HBD task. Moreover, they exhibited greater amplitude modulation of both the HEP and the MP during cardiac interoception. However, they evinced poorer awareness of their interoceptive skills. Conclusion: Convergent behavioral and electrophysiological data show that overactive monitoring in OCD extends to the sensing of internal bodily signals. Moreover, this pattern discriminated OCD from panic patients, suggesting a condition-specific alteration. Results highlight the potential of exploring interoceptive processes in the OCD spectrum to better characterize the population?s cognitive profile. Finally, our findings may lay new bridges between somatic theories of emotion and cognitive models of OCD. [Work partially supported by CONICET, CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular (1130920), COLCIENCIAS (1115-545-31374 and 1115-569-33858), FONCyT-PICT 2012-0412, FONCyT-PICT 2012-1309, FONDAP 15150012, and INECO Foundation.]