Neuropsychological deficits in drug naïve, non-depressed obsessive-compulsive disorder patients

There are several studies that compared neuropsychological performance of OCD patients with healthy controls. However, there are hardly any studies which have used drug-naïve as well as non-depressed OCD subjects in their studies. The present study compared eighteen drug-naïve non-depressed OCD patients with similar number of age, education and sex matched healthy controls on neuropsychological tests. The tests used are block design, object assembly, Visuospatial Working Memory Test, Verbal Working Memory Test, Complex Figure Test, Stroop Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. In addition to usual significance testing, Effect Sizes were calculated. In addition, correlation was done between neuropsychological test variables and clinical variables. The results did not show any significant correlation between any of the clinical variables and neuropsychological test variables. On the other hand, patients showed significant deficits mainly in executive functions and organizational strategy with respect to visuospatial functions. The observed deficits can be attributed to both dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex involvement.

► Research carried on drug naïve and non-depressed patients. Having these two are relatively rare in OCD research. ► Some of the neuropsychological tests are used in a novel way. ► Some of the neuropsychological tests are probably used for the first time in OCD research. ► ‘Effect Size’ is analyzed and discussion is based mainly on it.