Research progress in brain morphological characteristics of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a high disabling psychiatric disease with the clinical symptoms of recurrent intrusive thoughts or repetitive behaviors. The etiology and pathogenesis of OCD have not been fully elucidated. Exploring the brain morphological characteristics of OCD is important for understanding the pathological mechanism of OCD. Besides, as potential biomarkers, brain morphological characteristics have a good application prospect in assisting clinical diagnosis and treatment. In recent years, neuromodulation techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) have been widely used in the treatment of OCD. Exploring the abnormal brain morphological characteristics of OCD may provide a basis for the selection of neuromodulation targets. Current studies on the brain morphological characteristics of OCD mainly focus on the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuit, which is closely related to the pathological mechanism of OCD. Limited by the differences in inclusion and exclusion criteria, medication and data analysis methods among these studies, there are many inconsistent results on the brain morphological characteristics of OCD, and how to promote the clinical application needs further exploration. This article reviews the research results of brain morphological characteristics of OCD, discusses the clinical application prospect, and points out the future development direction, in order to promote the progress of etiology and clinical treatment of OCD.

Keywords

• obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd)
• brain morphological characteristic
• structural magnetic resonance imaging (smri)
• diffusion tensor imaging (dti)