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Projekt Druckansicht

Neurobiologie und Psychophysiologie veränderter Lern- und Extinktionsprozesse von Furcht bei Patienten mit einer Zwangserkrankung

Antragstellerinnen / Antragsteller Professorin Dr. Kathrin Koch; Dr. Victor Spoormaker
Fachliche Zuordnung Klinische Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Kinder- und Jugendspychiatrie
Förderung Förderung von 2016 bis 2021
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 314271828
 
Erstellungsjahr 2021

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, persistent thoughts and repetitive behaviors. These characteristic symptoms are usually causing considerably stress and anxiety. Previous studies showed altered activation in core regions of the fear circuitry in OCD, and fear learning as well as fear extinction can be assumed to constitute central mechanisms of the disorder. Given that cognitive behavioral therapies used to treat obsessions and compulsions in OCD are typically extinction-based we assumed that exploring fear conditioning (i.e., fear learning and extinction) in OCD might help to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Against this background, the planned project was designed to investigate the neural and psychophysiological correlates of fear conditioning and extinction and extinction recall in OCD using refined psychophysiological readouts (i.e., startle electromyography, pupillometry, SCR) and fMRI fear conditioning to investigate which mechanisms may be altered in association with these processes in patients with OCD. Against expectation, our findings did not show any differences between groups in any of the task phases or parameters, except for a trend towards higher startle amplitudes during extinction for OCD. We also did not detect any differences in brain activation between patients and healthy controls. Overall, our results did not provide evidence for differences in psychophysiology or brain activity using classical fear conditioning, challenging the assumption of generically impaired extinction learning and memory in OCD. Results of the project are not economically feasible but provide a relevant contribution to the field of OCD research.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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