Error and feedback processing in own and observed actions in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

The planned project aims to systematically and comprehensively characterize the changes in action monitoring associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

To this end, the following different aspects of action monitoring will be investigated in several sub-studies with regard to their behavioral and possibly neuronal correlates: Error and feedback processing, learning from external feedback, coupling of feedback and action valence in feedback learning.

In particular, the influence of the contextual factor agency (self-efficacy/perception of control), operationalized by examining action monitoring processes in the context of one's own and observed actions, on these processes in OCD will be clarified. In addition, the specificity of the hyperactivity in behavior monitoring assumed in OCD for this disorder will be examined by comparing it with a clinical control sample (patients with social anxiety disorder, SAD) and with healthy subjects. A comparison of OCD and SAD patients with regard to an underlying hyperactivity of the behavioural monitoring system, in particular depending on contextual factors, is a logical next step in order to characterize changes in action monitoring in OCD in more detail. While in SAD the perception and evaluation of oneself and performance by others is at the center of the disorder, in OCD an increased perception of control is assumed, possibly due to deficient sensorimotor integration processes. Agency is therefore a contextual factor that should affect action monitoring processes in the two patient groups in different ways.

The present research program uses established computerized experimental tasks and electrophysiological measures (event-correlated potentials, ECPs) to investigate action monitoring processes.