Increased error rate and delayed response to negative emotional stimuli in antisaccade task in obsessive-compulsive disorder

International Journal of Psychophysiology. 2023. No. 192. P. 62–71.

Guzal Khayrullina, Martynova O., Elizaveta P.

Ample evidence links impaired inhibitory control, attentional distortions, emotional dysregulation, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, it remains unclear what underlies the deficit that triggers the
OCD cycle. The present study used an antisaccade paradigm with emotional valences to compare eye movement
patterns reflecting inhibitory control and attention switching in OCD and healthy control groups. Thirty-two
patients with OCD and thirty healthy controls performed the antisaccade task with neutral, positive, and
negative visual images served as fixation stimuli. Presentation of the fixation stimulus overlapped with target
stimuli appearance for 200 ms. The OCD group showed more errors to negative stimuli than the control group
and they also performed antisaccades more slowly to negative and neutral stimuli than positive ones. Other
patterns, including mean gaze velocity of correct antisaccades did not differ between groups. The mean gaze
velocity of correct antisaccades was higher for negative and positive stimuli than for neutral stimuli in both
groups. The peak velocity parameter did not show any differences either between groups or between valences.
The findings support a hypothesis that an attentional bias toward negative stimuli interferes with inhibitory
control in OCD.

Keywords: attention, emotion, eye-tracking, obsessive-compulsive disorder, inhibitory control

Publication based on the results of: Active and passive decoding of neuronal processes of cognition and decision making in normal and pathological brain (2023)