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Introduction: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) showed impaired spatial working memory (SWM). We evaluated whether patients and healthy controls (HCs) differed in spatial store capacity, and whether they differed in the relative weight of spatial store capacity and/or executive strategy in SWM. Methods: Thirty inpatients with OCD and 31 age- and education-matched HCs underwent the CANTAB SWM, SRM (a measure of spatial store). The severity of OC symptoms was assessed using the Y-BOCS. Statistical significance: α = 0.05. Results: Patients showed poorer performance than HCs in all neuropsychological outcomes. Both poorer SRM and SWM strategy were significantly associated with poorer SWM in the entire sample. No significant interaction between SRM and Group was found, while a significant interaction between SWM strategy and Group emerged; in patients the magnitude of this association was approximately twofold larger than in HCs. OC symptom severity did not correlate with neuropsychological performance. Conclusions: Patients with OCD had poorer spatial store capacity than HCs. However, the weight of poorer executive strategy in SWM was greater in patients than HCs, whereas the weight of spatial store was similar. We provided a direct evidence that an impairment in the executive component might be the crucial factor influencing the poorer SWM of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) demonstrate impairment in decisional processes in which both cognition and emotion play a crucial role. Methods. We investigated the connection between decision-making performances and choice-related skin conductance responses (SCRs), to identify a somatic marker impairment affecting decisional processes in these patients. We explored SCRs during the Iowa Gambling Task in 20 OCD and 18 control, measuring anticipatory and posticipatory psychophysiological reactions according to card choices and to the outcomes of each selection. Results. Most patients exhibited weaker SCRs compared to HC, although there weren't substantial differences in magnitude between the two groups. In contrast with HC, patients with OCD showed no significant differences of SCRs activation according to card selections; they chose cards from neither favourable nor unfavourable decks. Conclusions. The main finding of the study were the evidence of a dysfunctional biological marker in OCD subjects, affecting decision-making process. Dysfunctional patterns of SCRs could partially explain OCDs’ impairment in this ability. Decision-making deficits in OCDs could be influenced in part by the lack of somatic differences in discriminating between advantageous and disadvantageous behaviour. These findings could lead to a more complete understanding of OCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]