Disorder-Specific Neuroanatomical Correlates of Attentional Bias in Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Hypochondriasis

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Abstract
Difficulty inhibiting irrelevant information, for instance obsessive thoughts and impulses, is a key feature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).1,2 Because most of their attentional resources are allocated to threat cues related to their concerns, patients with OCD are limited in their ability to selectively attend to relevant information while simultaneously ignoring irrelevant competing information.1 Similar cognitive dysfunctions have been described for panic disorder (PD).3 Attentional bias in anxiety disorders is presumably not simply a by-product of emotional state but may play a major role in symptom causation and maintenance.4-6 The critical process of gating (ie, inhibiting irrelevant information) has been linked to frontal-striatal function.7,8 Impaired frontal-striatal function is considered to be of etiological importance in the affective, behavioral, and cognitive characteristics of OCD.9 In contrast, the brainstem and limbic regions, such as the amygdala and (para)hippocampal region, are mainly implicated in the symptoms of PD.10-13