Abstract #1184

Diffusion Spectrum Imaging of White Matter Abnormalities in Fronto-Striato-Thalamic Circuit in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

C-H. Chiu¹, Yu-Chun Lo², W-Y. Chiang³, F-C. Yeh³, W-Y. I. Tseng^2,3

¹Department of Psychiatry, Songde Campus, Taipei City Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; ²Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; ³Center for Optoelectronic Biomedicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder which the primary site of pathology remains unclear. We investigated three white matter tracts in the fronto-striatal-thalamic circuits that might serve the neuropsychopathology of patients with OCD inferred from diffusion spectrum imaging. We hypothesized that white matter abnormalities in patients with OCD might correspond to neuropsychological data. We found that generalized fraction anisotropy was positively correlated with Yale-Brown scores over cingulum bundles and stria terminalis in OCD subjects. The result could be explained by the hypothesis that there might be a compensation process in white matter to deal with biologically inherent abnormal hyper-connectivity.