Task fMRI studies investigating inhibitory control in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders: A comparative meta-analysis.

Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and eating disorders (EDs) share similarities in terms of clinical characteristics and deficits in inhibitory control.

Objective: To investigate whether inhibitory control could serve as a common behavioural phenotype between OCD and EDs and whether it might be underpinned by shared and/or distinct neural signatures.

Method: We performed a quantitative meta-analysis of brain function abnormalities during the inhibitory control task-based functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scan across patients with OCD and EDs using seed-based d mapping (SDM).

Results: The meta-analysis included sixteen OCD fMRI studies and ten EDs fMRI studies. And findings revealed that patients with OCD showed hypoactivation relative to healthy controls and patients with EDs in the anterior cingulate cortex, while compared to healthy controls and patients with OCD, patients with EDs showed hypoactivation in the right insula.

Conclusions: Patients with OCD and EDs are inclined to exhibit impaired inhibitory control, which may be attributed to different abnormal patterns of neural activation.