Altered Functional Connectivity Strength at Rest in Medication-Free Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Dan Lv,Lei Sun,Ping Li,Zhenghai Sun,Yuhua Wang,Ru Yang,Yangpan Ou,Jinyang Li,Tinghuizi Shang,Chuang Zhan,Cuicui Jia,Wenbin Guo,Yunhui Chen,Xiaoping Wang,Guangfeng Zhang,Jidong Ma,Sergio Bagnato

doi:10.1155/2021/3741104

Abstract

Background Previous studies explored the whole-brain functional connectome using the degree approach in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, whether the altered degree values can be used to discriminate OCD from healthy controls (HCs) remains unclear. Methods A total of 40 medication-free patients with OCD and 38 HCs underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scan. Data were analyzed with the degree approach and a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Results Patients with OCD showed increased degree values in the left thalamus and left cerebellum Crus I and decreased degree values in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right precuneus, and left postcentral gyrus. SVM classification analysis indicated that the increased degree value in the left thalamus is a marker of OCD, with an acceptable accuracy of 88.46%, sensitivity of 87.50%, and specificity of 89.47%. Conclusion Altered degree values within and outside the cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuit may cocontribute to the pathophysiology of OCD. Increased degree values of the left thalamus can be used as a future marker for OCD understanding-classification.

Highlights

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined as a combination of intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors, which affects social and occupational functions and imposes an economic burden on patients and their families [1, 2]
The degree values in the left thalamus can be used in distinguishing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with an accuracy of 88.46% (69/78), a sensitivity of 87.50% (35/40), and a specificity of 89.47% (34/38) (Figure 3)
The increased degree values in the left thalamus can be used in differentiating OCD from healthy controls (HCs)

Summary

Introduction

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined as a combination of intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (compulsions), which affects social and occupational functions and imposes an economic burden on patients and their families [1, 2]. The pathophysiological mechanism of OCD remains unclear, neuroimaging studies have highlighted abnormalities in the cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuit, including the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), thalamus, and striatum [3,4,5,6]. Previous studies applied a region-of-interest (ROI) approach to investigate the FC alterations in given brain regions at rest in OCD with inconsistent results [11,12,13]. The ROI analysis estimates the strength and significant series of correlations between a given brain region and all other brain regions It may miss the crucial brain regions related to the pathophysiological mechanism of OCD [14]. SVM classification analysis indicated that the increased degree value in the left thalamus is a marker of OCD, with an acceptable accuracy of 88.46%, sensitivity of 87.50%, and specificity of 89.47%. Increased degree values of the left thalamus can be used as a future marker for OCD understanding-classification

Methods

Results

Conclusion