Aberrant functional connectivity of neural circuits associated with thought-action fusion in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Background Cognitive theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) stress the importance of dysfunctional beliefs in the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, a neurobiological understanding of these cognitive models, including thought-action fusion (TAF), is surprisingly lacking. Thus, this functional magnetic resonance imaging study aimed to investigate whether altered functional connectivity (FC) is associated with the TAF paradigm in OCD patients. Methods Forty-one OCD patients and 47 healthy controls (HCs) participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using a TAF task, in which they were asked to read the name of a close or a neutral person in association with positive and negative statements. Results The conventional TAF condition (negative statements/close person) induced significant FC between the regions of interest (ROIs) identified using multivoxel pattern analysis and the visual association areas, default mode network subregions, affective processing, and several subcortical regions in both groups. Notably, sparser FC was observed in OCD patients. Further analysis confined to the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) and affective networks demonstrated that OCD patients exhibited reduced ROI FC with affective regions and greater ROI FC with CSTC components in the TAF condition compared to HCs. Within the OCD patients, middle cingulate cortex-insula FC was correlated with TAF and responsibility scores. Conclusions Our TAF paradigm revealed altered context-dependent engagement of the CSTC and affective networks in OCD patients. These findings suggest that the neurobiology of cognitive models corresponds to current neuroanatomical models of OCD. Further, they elucidate the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of OCD at the circuit-based level.