Habits, Goals and Compulsive Behaviour

Speaker: Claire Gillan, Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin

Brain meeting

Abstract:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) manifests in compulsive urges to perform repetitive avoidance behaviours. It has been proposed that the need to perform compulsions arises from a neurocognitive imbalance – a somewhat vague theoretical account that suggests patients rely too much on automatic stimulus-response habit associations and not enough on more purposeful, goal-directed modes of action selection. This talk will attempt to clarify how this imbalance arises, describing data gathered from a variety of behavioural paradigms, computational modelling exercises, and fMRI. In the process, I open an embarrassingly extensive file drawer, highlighting the challenges we’ve faced when attempting to induce habits in healthy humans in the lab. Changing course to some more applied projects, I will make a pitch for a move away from research in small sample, case-control patient studies towards large-scale dimensional research in psychiatry. This case will be supported by data from ~3000 subjects collected online showing that failures in goal-directed control are not unique to OCD; but are best explained by a trans-diagnostic psychiatric dimension – ‘compulsive behaviour and intrusive thought’, which features in many disorders. Finally, I will attempt to bridge the gap between lab and clinic, discussing a recent study that examines if/how goal-directed planning is altered when patients recover following a successful course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

 Further information: ion.fil.brainmeetings@ucl.ac.uk