Francesca D’Olimpio

Obsessions and compulsions and intolerance for uncertainty in a non-clinical sample

It has been hypothesized that decision-making difficulties in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder may arise from intolerance for uncertainty. We investigated the relationship between obsessivity and intolerance for uncertainty (defined in terms of need for cognitive closure), controlling for state and trait anxiety and depression. We tested nonclinical subjects through the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS), the Padua Inventory Revised (PI-R), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form-Y; STAI-Y). A principal component analysis showed a lack of correlation between the PI-R and the NFCS subscales. A set of multiple regression analyses performed on PI-R subscales showed that the need for cognitive closure cannot be considered as a strong predictor of obsessions and compulsions. These results speak against the hypothesis that people with high obsessivity have difficulties in taking decisions because of a cognitive need for certainty. We instead argue that difficulties in taking decisions may be related to other specific cognitive beliefs or meta-beliefs.

Attentional biases toward threat: the concomitant presence of difficulty of disengagement and attentional avoidance in low trait anxious individuals

Attentional biases toward threats (ABTs) have been described in high anxious individuals and in clinical samples whereas they have been rarely reported in non-clinical samples (Bar-Haim et al., 2007; Cisler and Koster, 2010). Three kinds of ABTs have been identified (facilitation, difficulty of disengagement, and avoidance) but their mechanisms and time courses are still unclear. This study aimed to understand ABTs mechanisms and timing in low trait anxiety (LTA) and high trait anxiety (HTA) anxious individuals. In particular, in an exogenous cueing task we used threatening or neutral stimuli as peripheral cues with three presentation times (100, 200, or 500 ms). The main results showed that HTA individuals have an attentional facilitation bias at 100 ms (likely automatic in nature) whereas LTA individuals show attentional avoidance and difficulty to disengage from threatening stimuli at 200 ms (likely related to a strategic processing). Such findings demonstrate that threat biases attention with specific mechanisms and time courses, and that anxiety levels modulate attention allocation.

Role of Deontological Guilt in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder–Like Checking and Washing Behaviors

Obsessions and compulsions are driven by the goal of preventing or neutralizing guilt. We investigated whether inducing deontological versus altruistic guilt in healthy volunteers could activate checking behaviors and physical cleaning. Participants were asked to listen to stories that induced deontological guilt, altruistic guilt, or a neutral control state, and then were asked to classify 100 colored capsules into 12 small pots (Study 1) or to clean a Plexiglas cube (Study 2). Before and after hearing the story and after completing the task, participants completed a visual analog scale that assessed their current emotions. Finally, participants completed a self-report questionnaire about discomfort, doubts, and perceived performance. Participants in the deontological group checked more (Study 1), cleaned the cube more times (Study 2), and scored higher in doubts and discomfort than did participants in the altruistic or control groups. These data suggest that deontological guilt is the mental state specifically related to checking and cleaning compulsions.

Attentional biases in problem and non-problem gamblers.

BACKGROUND From a cognitive perspective, attentional biases are deemed as factors responsible in the onset and development of gambling disorder. However, knowledge relating to attentional processes in gambling is scarce and studies to date have reported contrasting results. Moreover, no study has ever examined which component and what type of bias are involved in attentional bias in gambling. METHODS In the present study, 108 Italian participants, equally divided into problem and non-problem gamblers, were administered a modified Posner Task, an attentional paradigm in which - through the manipulation of stimuli presentation time - it is possible to measure both initial orienting and maintenance of attention. In addition to the experimental task, participants completed self-report measures involving (i) craving (Gambling Craving Scale), (ii) depression, anxiety and stress (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale) and (iii) emotional dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale). RESULTS Analyses revealed facilitation in detecting gambling-related stimuli at the encoding level in problem gamblers but not in non-problem gamblers. Compared to non-problem gamblers, problem gamblers also reported higher levels of craving, emotional dysregulation, and negative mood states. Furthermore, all measures correlated with the gambling severity. LIMITATIONS The use of indirect measure of attentional bias could be less accurate compared to direct measures. CONCLUSIONS The facilitation in detecting gambling-related stimuli in problem gamblers and the correlation between subjective craving and facilitation bias suggests that attentional bias could not be due to a conditioning process but that motivational factors such as craving could induce addicted-related seeking-behaviors.

Inducing closing-in phenomenon in healthy young adults: the effect of dual task and stimulus complexity on drawing performance

Closing-in (CI) is the tendency to act very close to the model in tasks such as drawing, 3D construction, gesture imitation, or writing. Closing-in is observed in degenerative and focal brain diseases, but also in normally developing children. In the present paper, three experiments were conducted to evaluate whether CI can be triggered during a copying task in normal young adults by increasing stimulus complexity and attentional load. Participants were required to copy complex lines in one of three conditions: without interfering activities (baseline), during counting, or during execution of a 2-back short-term memory task. In Experiment 1, participants were required to reproduce horizontally aligned stimuli, starting from a dot placed below each stimulus and proceeding from left to right; in Experiment 2, stimuli were again horizontally aligned, but the starting dot was placed above each stimulus, and writing proceeded from right to left; in Experiment 3, stimuli were aligned vertically and copying proceeded in upward direction. Results from all experiments showed that when normal young adults are engaged in an attentional-demanding concurrent activity, they tend to approach to the model, whereas the effect of stimulus complexity disappeared with unusual writing direction (Experiments 2 and 3). These findings demonstrate that even in normal young adults, a reduction in available attentional resources can release an attraction toward the model.

Deontological morality can be experimentally enhanced by increasing disgust: A transcranial direct current stimulation study

ABSTRACT Previous studies empirically support the existence of a distinctive association between deontological (but not altruistic) guilt and both disgust and obsessive‐compulsive (OC) symptoms. Given that the neural substrate underlying deontological guilt comprises brain regions strictly implicated in the emotion of disgust (i.e. the insula), the present study aimed to test the hypothesis that indirect stimulation of the insula via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would enhance disgust and morality in the deontological domain. A randomized, sham‐controlled, within‐subject design was used. Thirty‐seven healthy individuals (25 women) underwent 15‐min anodal and sham tDCS over T3 in two different days, while their heart rate (HR) was recorded to derive measures of parasympathetic nervous system activity (HR variability; HRV). After the first 10‐min of sham or active tDCS stimulation, participants were asked to 1) complete a series of 6‐item words that could be completed with either a disgust‐related word (cleaning/dirtiness) or neutral alternatives; 2) rate how much a series of vignettes, each depicting a behavior that violated a specific moral foundation, were morally wrong. Levels of trait anxiety, depression, disgust sensitivity, scrupulosity, and altruism as well as pre‐ and post‐ stimulation momentary emotional states were assessed. Compared to the sham condition, after active stimulation of T3 a) HRV significantly increased and participants b) completed more words in terms of cleaning/dirtiness and c) reported greater subjective levels of disgust, all suggesting the elicitation of the emotion of disgust. Although the results are only marginally significant, they point to the absence of difference between the two experimental conditions for moral vignettes in the altruistic domain (i.e., animal care, emotional and physical human care), but not in the deontological domain (i.e., authority, fairness, liberty, and sacrality), where vignettes were judged as more morally wrong in the active compared to the sham condition. Moreover, scores on the OCI‐R correlated with how much vignettes were evaluated as morally wrong in the deontological domain only. Results preliminarily support the association between disgust and morality in the deontological domain, with important implications for OC disorder (OCD). Future studies should explore the possibility of decreasing both disgust and morality in patients with OCD by the use of non‐invasive brain stimulation techniques. HighlightstDCS over T3 enhances disgust and morality in the deontological domain.T3 stimulation affects self‐report, physiological, and implicit measures of disgust.Deontological but not altruistic morality is associated with the emotion of disgust.

The effect of bicephalic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on the attentional bias for threat: A transcranial direct current stimulation study

Previous stimulation studies demonstrated that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is involved in threat processing. According to a model of emotional processing, an unbalance between the two DLPFCs, with a hyperactivation of right frontal areas, is involved in the processing of negative emotions and genesis of anxiety. In the present study, we investigated the role of the right and left DLPFC in threat processing in healthy women who also completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). We simultaneously modulated the activity of the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex by applying bicephalic transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) before participants completed a modified version of the classic Posner task using threatening and nonthreatening stimuli as spatial cues. Anodal stimulation on the right DLPFC with a simultaneous cathodal stimulation over the left side induced a disengagement bias in individuals with low STAI scores and a facilitation bias in individuals with high STAI scores. Anodal stimulation on the left DLPFC with the simultaneous cathodal stimulation over the right side did not affect threat processing. The findings of the present study provided specific support to the hypothesis that unbalanced activation between left and right hemispheres with enhanced activation of the right DLPFC is critical in early top-down threat processing in healthy individuals.