Intraoperative electrophysiological study in patients with OCD submitted to deep brain stimulation

Abstract

The main objectives of this project are to better understand the pathophysiology of obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) using new experimental models to identify predictive factors of response to conventional as well as new treatment alternatives. Instead of investigating OCD from a phenotypic perspective, in this project we will adopt well established behavioral paradigms related to fear and anxiety, which involve specific neuronal networks and brain circuits. Moreover, we will test the impact of psychotherapeutic, pharmacological and neurosurgical interventions on the response to these paradigms. A similar protocol involving behavior paradigms and pharmacological treatment will be applied to healthy children and children with OCD before and after treatment. Simultaneously to the paradigms, we will collect pre and post treatment data by means of neurop- sychological testing, electroencephalography and neuroimaging, as well as blood peripheral ma- rkers. Guided by previous information on the neurocircuits related to these behavioral paradigms, we will evaluate the profile of gene expression and methylation in specific areas of post-mortem brain material of OCD patients. Equivalents of the paradigms will also be run in an animal model for OCD submitted to pharmacological intervention. Brain material from the animals will also be collected and tested for the profile of gene expression and methytilation. We also aim to develop a new statistical model to optimize the analysis of data obtained from different subprojects, aiming to reduce the likelihood of a patient to be submitted to a procedure with low effectiveness. (AU)