Aberrant ventral striatal responses during incentive processing in unmedicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

OBJECTIVE

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by the dysfunction of control and reward mechanisms. However, only few neuroimaging studies of OCD have examined the reward processing. We examined the neural responses during incentive processing in OCD.

METHOD

  Twenty unmedicated patients with OCD and 20 age-, sex-, and IQ-matched healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a modified monetary incentive delay task.

RESULTS

Compared with controls, patients with OCD showed increased ventral striatal activation in the no-loss minus loss outcome contrast and a significant positive correlation between the ventral striatal activation and compulsion symptom severity. In addition, patients with OCD showed increased activations in the frontostriatal regions in the gain minus no-gain outcomes contrast. During loss anticipation, patients with OCD showed less activations in the lateral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortices. However, during gain anticipation, patients with OCD and healthy controls did not differ in the ventral striatal activation.

CONCLUSION

These findings provide neural evidence for altered incentive processing in unmedicated patients with OCD, suggesting an elevated sensitivity to negatively affect stimuli as well as dysfunction of the ventral striatum.

[Clinical analysis of 1704 cases of fetal distress]

From Oct 1985 through Sept 1986 and from Oct 1988 through Sept 1989, a total of 1,704 cases were clinically diagnosed as having fetal distress. The results of analysis showed no significant differences (P greater than 0.05) between fetal distress and fetal sex, and age of pregnancy women respectively (P greater than 0.05), but there was a significant difference between fetal distress and gestational weeks. (P less than 0.01) and birth weight (P less than 0.05). The highest incidence occurred in postterm pregnancy. The number of neonatal asphyxia cases with fetal distress accounted for 61.08% of the total of neonatal asphyxia. The more indexes of the fetal distress, the higher is the incidence rate of asphyxia neonatorum. Among the complications of pregnancy, the fetal distress rate due to pregnancy induced hypertension is the highest. The results suggested that by using multiple item examinations, early diagnosis of fetal distress and prompt management are possible to decrease the asphyxia rate and the prevention of complications of pregnancy is important to reduce the fetal distress.

An epidemiological study of behaviour problems in school children in urban areas of Beijing

A total of 2432 primary school children, aged 7-14 yrs. in urban areas of Beijing, were evaluated with the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire developed by Rutter. The frequency of behaviour problems in primary school was 8.3%-7.4% antisocial behaviour and 0.62% neurotic behaviour. Behaviour problems were higher in boys than girls: antisocial behaviour was dominant in boys, while neurotic behaviour was common in girls. The frequency of behaviour problems varied significantly with the different social environments in which the children were brought up, but were not different between one-child families and those with more children.