Motivation and value influences in the relative balance of goal-directed and habitual behaviours in obsessive-compulsive disorder

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  • Bibtex: @voon2015
  • Bibliography: Voon, V., Baek, K., Enander, J., Worbe, Y., Morris, L. S., Harrison, N. A., … Daw, N. (2015). Motivation and value influences in the relative balance of goal-directed and habitual behaviours in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Translational Psychiatry, 5(11), e670. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2015.165

Why and when I was reading this

I was doing a deep dive into the role of Habits in OCD

Key takeaways

  • OCD subjects (compared to healthy controls) were less goal oriented and more habitual to reward outcomes, with a shift towards more goal orientation and lower habitual choices to loss outcomes.
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We show a critical influence of outcome valence on the relative balance of goal-directed and habitual learning in OCD. In the context of reward outcomes, OCD is characterized by impaired goal-directed learning along with a relative shift towards enhance habitual learning. For OCD patients (but not HVs), the pattern shift with goal-directed learning enhanced and habitual learning impaired, relative to the reward condition.

We show that OCD is associated with a specific enhancement in habitual learning to reward outcomes and that this enhanced habitual learning correlates with greater YBOCS compulsivity severity scores.

Page 2: Highlight annotation by Oskar Flygare on June 21st 2018, 11:20:16 am: OCD subjects compared with healthy volunteers were less goal oriented (model-based) and more habitual (model-free) to reward outcomes with a shift towards greater model-based and lower habitual choices to loss outcomes. OCD subjects also had enhanced acquisition learning to loss outcomes on the one-step task, which correlated with goal-directed learning in the two-step task. OCD subjects had greater stay behaviours or perseveration in the one-step task irrespective of outcome. Compulsion severity was correlated with habitual learning in the reward condition. Obsession severity was correlated with greater switching after loss outcomes.