Abstract
Introduction: Studies have shown that patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) often perform more poorly than healthy control (HC) participants on cognitive tasks involving executive functions. Most studies, however, have been performed in Western countries and societies, making it uncertain whether impaired executive functions can also be observed among non-Western patients with OCD. To address this gap in the literature, we evaluated several executive functions in Chinese patients with OCD and HCs.Methods: Participants included consisted of 46 Chinese patients with OCD (25 men, 21 women), ranging in age from 19 to 56 years, and 45 matched HCs without any self-reported lifetime psychiatric disorder. They all lived in Shanghai or the surrounding area. Five tests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were used to evaluate several executive functions (response inhibition, spatial working memory, planning, and cognitive flexibility) along with testing basic learning and visual recognition memory. Statistical tests using a Bonferroni-corrected significance level of p = 0.003 were performed to assess overall patient-control group differences in cognitive performance. Additionally, we explored performance differences between patients classified as having either relatively mild symptoms or severe symptoms based on the individual total scores on the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale.Results: There were no significant performance differences between patients with OCD and HC in any of the cognitive tests. Similarly, cognitive performance of patients with relatively mild OCD symptoms did not differ significantly from that of patients with severe symptoms.Conclusions: These results do not seem to support the view that impaired executive functioning represents a basic cognitive and pathophysiological feature of Chinese patients with OCD. However, due to study limitations, additional research is required before this conclusion can be well accepted.
Highlights
Studies have shown that patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) often perform more poorly than healthy control (HC) participants on cognitive tasks involving executive functions
Studies have shown that patients with Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) typically perform more poorly than matched healthy control participants (HCs) on neuropsychological tests involving high-level cognitive or ‘executive’ functions, including planning, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory motor control [5,6,7]
Cognitive studies of patients with OCD have not always yielded consistent findings [12, 13]. This makes it difficult to arrive at a clear picture of the cognitive functions that are impaired and those functions that are not impaired in patients with OCD
Summary
Studies have shown that patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) often perform more poorly than healthy control (HC) participants on cognitive tasks involving executive functions. Studies have shown that patients with OCD typically perform more poorly than matched healthy control participants (HCs) on neuropsychological tests involving high-level cognitive or ‘executive’ functions, including planning, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory motor control [5,6,7]. These results have led to the hypothesis that impaired executive functioning (EF), including hyper excitability of the orbital frontal cortex and its functional connections, is a core cognitive and pathophysiological feature of OCD [8, 9]. Gaining such understanding could help clinicians to target psychological interventions for OCD according to the integrity of the patients’ cognitive functioning
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