Neuropsychological test performance in trichotillomania: A further link with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

Two neuropsychological tests, the Money Road Map test and the Stylus Maze, which had previously distinguished obsessive-compulsive patients from normal controls, were administered to 21 female patients with severe trichotillomania (an irresistible compulsion to pull out one's hair), and the results were compared with those of age- and sex-matched groups with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) ( n =12), other anxiety disorders ( n=17), and normal controls ( n=16). The trichotillo-mania group had significantly more errors than normal controls on the Stylus Maze, but not on the Road Map test. The OCD group differed significantly from normal controls in the number of rule breaks on the Stylus Maze. Within the trichotillomania group, errors on the two tasks correlated with symptom severity and predicted clinical response to clomipramine. Results are examined in terms of possible links between trichotillomania and OCD, and a neurobiological perspective of trichotillomania is discussed.