Cognitive dysfunction in post-traumatic obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether patients who develop obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) after posttraumatic stress disorder, i.e. post-traumatic OCD (PsT-OCD), display a distinctive neurocognitive pattern of dysfunction.

Methods: Patients with PsT-OCD (n = 16), pre-traumatic OCD (PrT-OCD) (n = 18), non-traumatic OCD (NonT-OCD) (n = 67) and healthy controls (n = 17) had their performance compared on the following neuropsychological tests: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Iowa Gambling Task, the Wechsler Memory Scale Logical Memory, the Brief Visual Memory Test - Revised, and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale for Intelligence.

Results: Patients with OCD, as a group, were characterized by poor set-shifting abilities and impaired verbal and visuospatial memories. Impaired set-shifting abilities were found to correlate with the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in all groups of patients with OCD, with the exception of PsT-OCD. Only patients with PsT-OCD were characterized by impaired visuospatial recognition, which was found to correlate with poor set-shifting abilities in this particular group of patients, but not in individuals with other types of OCD or in healthy controls.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that PsT-OCD is associated with a distinctive pattern of neurocognitive dysfunction, thus providing support for a different subtype of OCD.