Functional connectivity alterations between default mode network and occipital cortex in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

NeuroImage Clinical, vol. 33, pp. 102915

Abstract

Altered brain network connectivity is a potential biomarker for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A meta-analysis of resting-state MRI studies by Gürsel et al. (2018) described altered functional connectivity in OCD patients within and between the default mode network (DMN), the salience network (SN), and the frontoparietal network (FPN), as well as evidence for aberrant fronto-striatal circuitry. Here, we tested the replicability of these meta-analytic rsfMRI findings by measuring functional connectivity during resting-state fMRI in a new sample of OCD patients (n = 24) and matched controls (n = 33). We performed seed-to-voxel analyses using 30 seed regions from the prior meta-analysis. OCD patients showed reduced functional connectivity between the SN and the DMN compared to controls, replicating previous findings. We did not observe significant group differences of functional connectivity within the DMN, SN, nor FPN. Additionally, we observed reduced connectivity between the visual network to both the DMN and SN in OCD patients, in particular reduced functional connectivity between lateral parietal seeds and the left inferior lateral occipital pole. Furthermore, the right lateral parietal seed (associated with the DMN) was more strongly correlated with a cluster in the right lateral occipital cortex and precuneus (a region partly overlapping with the Dorsal Attentional Network (DAN)) in patients. Importantly, this latter finding was positively correlated to OCD symptom severity. Overall, our study partly replicated prior meta-analytic findings, highlighting hypoconnectivity between SN and DMN as a potential biomarker for OCD. Furthermore, we identified changes between the SN and the DMN with the visual network. This suggests that abnormal connectivity between cortex regions associated with abstract functions (transmodal regions such as the DMN), and cortex regions associated with constrained neural processing (unimodal regions such as the visual cortex), may be important in OCD.

Authors 6

1. Tal Geffen corresponding

   Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: tal.geffen@charite.de

   Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

2. Jonathan Smallwood

   Queen's University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

3. Carsten Finke

   Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin · Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany; Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Berlin, Germany

   Department of Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

   Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Berlin, Germany

4. Sebastian Olbrich

   University Hospital Zurich · Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich

   Affiliation as printed

   Department for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

5. Zsuzsika Sjoerds Aachen Cognitive Psychology Unit Institute of Psychology, Leiden University Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain & Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

   Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

   Leiden Institute for Brain & Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

6. Florian Schlagenhauf

   Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences · Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin · Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany

   Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany

   Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

   Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany