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Background: The application of artificial intelligence to extract predictors of Gambling disorder (GD) is a new field of study. A plethora of studies have suggested that maladaptive personality dispositions may serve as risk factors for GD. New method: Here, we used Classification and Regression Trees algorithm to identify multivariate predictive patterns of personality profiles that could identify GD patients from healthy controls at an individual level. Forty psychiatric patients, recruited from specialized gambling clinics, without any additional comorbidity and 160 matched healthy controls completed the Five-Factor model of personality as measured by the NEO-PI-R, which were used to build the classification model. Results: Classification algorithm was able to discriminate individuals with GD from controls with an AUC of 77.3% (95% CI 0.65-0.88, p < 0.0001). A multidimensional construct of traits including sub-facets of openness, neuroticism and conscientiousness was employed by algorithm for classification detection. Comparison with existing method(s): To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that combines behavioral data with machine learning approach useful to extract multidimensional features characterizing GD realm. Conclusion: Our study provides a proof-of-concept demonstrating the potential of the proposed approach for GD diagnosis. The multivariate combination of personality facets characterizing individuals with GD can potentially be used to assess subjects' vulnerability in clinical setting. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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: alpha = 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.

We investigated the association between neuropsychological performance and real-life functioning in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). As a secondary aim, we investigated the association between neuropsychological performance and self-reported quality of life (QoL).We retrospectively selected 68 of 240 inpatients with OCD, who had been hospitalised for a 4-week psychiatric rehabilitation programme. We used clinical information recorded in the patients' electronic medical records. We considered the following variables: neuropsychological performance (verbal/visual memory, sustained attention, visual-constructive ability, and language fluency; in a sub-sample of 37 subjects, divided attention, working memory, and attentional shifting were also available); real-life functional achievements (social/vocational outcomes and independent living); subjectively reported QoL (WHOQOL-BREF); obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms severity (DY-BOCS).We found significant associations between poorer neuropsychological performance and poorer achievements in independent living and vocational outcomes. Among the different neuropsychological tests, we found significant associations between language fluency/executive processing and independent living, and between divided attention, attentional shifting, working memory and vocational outcome. We found no significant associations between neuropsychological performance and subjectively reported QoL. OC symptoms severity was not associated with real-life functional achievements.Our preliminary results suggest that poorer neuropsychological performance may be associated with impaired real-life functioning in subjects with OCD.