A new approach to OCD: assessing the impact of environmental stimuli on functional and dysfunctional checking behaviour. (360G-Wellcome-200710_Z_16_Z)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and highly debilitating mental health disorder, which could be potentially treated through the disruption of maladaptive memories that contribute to the persistence of the disorder. Using an instrumental rodent model of OCD, the Observing Response Task (ORT), in which animals are trained to make unpredictably reinforced instrumental responses, but can check which response will be reinforced by pressing an ‘observing’ lever, we can dissociate functional and dysfunctional checking responses. Using this task, we have begun to investigate the influence of environmental cues on the development of maladaptive checking. We hypothesise that threatening, anxiogenic pavlovian cues in the environment promote the development of functional checking to reduce uncertainty, but that the conversion of these behaviours into dysfunctional, maladaptive responses is promoted by appetitive pavlovian cues. The proposed research aims to extend our preliminary findings, examining whether the relationship between sensitivity to aversive and appetitive pavlovian cues and the development of functional and dysfunctional checking is correlative or causal, and to determine the influence of appetitive and aversive cues on the development of compulsive checking. This would provide a springboard for future studies attempting to disrupt the reconsolidation of these maladaptive memories.