The Link between OCD, Risk for Psychopathology and Altered Oscillatory Activity after Errors: Evidence from Patients, Unaffected First-degree Relatives and Participants with Adverse Childhood Experiences

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show altered neural responses after errors during response tasks (Riesel, 2019). Mostly, preliminary studies found an increased neural signal following errors in OCD patients, often measured by the error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential occurring 0-100ms after errors. Another way to investigate error-monitoring are EEG frequency bands such as theta (4-7 Hz) and delta (1-4 Hz). For this project, we will analyze EEG data from a modified arrowhead version of the Eriksen flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). The data were already collected as part of another project (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/N87RX) and comprise data from 206 participants, including 55 OCD patients, 48 unaffected first-degree relatives, 43 people who had at least one adverse childhood experience, and 60 control subjects. The first aim is to investigate whether results from ERN studies with OCD patients can be transferred to frequency-based analyses, as time-frequency and frequency coupling analysis, i.e. medio-lateral theta/delta coupling in the prefrontal cortex as a measure of resource acquisition in the cognitive control network (Cavanagh et al., 2009; Pagnotta et al., 2024). In doing so, we hypothesize that we will find increased theta and delta power and increased frequency coupling after erroneous responses in OCD patients compared to controls, similar to increased ERN amplitudes. The second research question is whether oscillatory alterations after errors are also found in participants with adverse childhood experiences and unaffected first-degree relatives of OCD patients. A study by Riesel et al. (2011) indicated ERN differences between unaffected first-degree relatives of OCD patients and healthy controls supporting that altered error-processing may represent a neural risk marker that can also been found in participants at risk for the disorder. Can such results be found in error-related theta and delta activity and coupling as well?