This study will be conducted over the course of eight weeks. First, the participant will meet with the study psychologist to determine eligibility for the study. This includes an assessment of psychiatric and medical history. Eligible participants will then complete an in-person study session which includes completing questionnaires and playing computerized games while an electroencephalogram (EEG) is recorded. Participants will repeat these questionnaires and the EEG task battery eight weeks later. Individuals who have been diagnosed with OCD will receive exposure and response prevention (Ex/RP), the gold-standard behavioral treatment for OCD, during the eight week period.
This study aims to collect data from individuals with OCD and healthy controls in order to clarify how learning strategies are employed differently by individuals with compulsive psychopathology and healthy individuals, and how these processes change over time and are related to treatment outcomes. Behavioral and EEG data will be collected during two experimental reinforcement learning tasks from participants diagnosed with OCD (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 30). Computational modeling, an advanced data analytic approach that can directly link neural measures with behavior, will be used to quantify learning processes. These parameters then will be related to measures of neural events obtained using EEG, a neuroimaging method that has high temporal resolution, to test for evidence of neurocognitive alterations.