Abstract
In obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), functional behaviors such as checking that a door is locked become dysfunctional, maladaptive, and debilitating. However, it is currently unknown how aversive and appetitive motivations interact to produce functional and dysfunctional behavior in OCD. Here we show a double dissociation in the effects of anxiogenic cues and sensitivity to rewarding stimuli on the propensity to develop functional and dysfunctional checking behavior in a rodent analog of OCD, the observing response task (ORT). While anxiogenic manipulations of perceived threat (presentation of threat-associated contextual cues) and actual threat (punishment of incorrect responding on the ORT) enhanced functional checking, dysfunctional checking was unaffected. In contrast, rats that had previously been identified as “sign-trackers” on an autoshaping task—and therefore were highly sensitive to the incentive salience of appetitive environmental cues—selectively showed elevated levels of dysfunctional checking under a range of conditions, but particularly so under conditions of uncertainty. These data indicate that functional and dysfunctional checking are dissociable and supported by aversive and appetitive motivational processes, respectively. While functional checking is modulated by perceived and actual threat, dysfunctional checking recruits appetitive motivational processes, possibly akin to the “incentive habits” that contribute to drug-seeking in addiction.
Highlights
Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and highly debilitating mental health disorder with an estimated lifetime prevalence of 2.3% (Ruscio et al 2010)
To probe the psychological and neurobiological bases of checking, we previously developed a fully translational, rodent-to-human analog of OCDlike checking in rats that allows functional and dysfunctional checking to be assessed independently—the observingresponse task (ORT; Eagle et al 2014; Morein-Zamir et al 2018)
Testing our a priori hypothesis that sign-trackers would show more dysfunctional checking, we found that sign-trackers made more extra observing lever presses (eOLPs) than both goal-trackers [P = 0.04, d = 0.84] and controls [P = 0.008, d = 1.17]
Summary
Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and highly debilitating mental health disorder with an estimated lifetime prevalence of 2.3% (Ruscio et al 2010). A prominent view postulates that checking responses occur in response to perceived threats to reduce anxiety (Rachman 2002; Parrish and Radomsky 2010), due to dysfunction in a “security motivation system” that has evolved to detect environmental threats to survival (Szechtman and Woody 2004; Zor et al 2009) This is hypothesized to be an open-ended motivational system, where the sense of security is generated by an endogenous feeling of “knowing” or “yedasentience” that is deficient in patients with OCD (Szechtman and Woody 2004). Checking can be functional—illuminating a stimulus light above the currently rewarded lever—or dysfunctional—when animals continue to respond when the light is already illuminated, which provides no further information or reward This task allows a single behavioral response—a checking lever press—to be psychologically and neurobiologically dissociated into functional and dysfunctional components, in a manner that is more readily quantifiable than alternative ethological tasks such as marble burying
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