Neuropsychology of obsessive compulsive disorder preliminary findings

Neuropsychological findings in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have yielded inconsistent findings. This study attempted to both examine specific functions hypothesized to be impaired in OCD and more generalized performance variables that may underlie such compromised function. Selected neuropsychological variables were examined in 31 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and 22 age and sex-matched normal controls. OCD patients performed significantly more poorly than normal controls on visuospatial, visuoper-ceptual and visual discrimination tasks as well as on set shifting, sequencing and tracking tasks. These findings were especially prominent in male patients, who also had impairment on visuoconstructional tasks.