Reduced thickness of anterior cingulate cortex in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by a pattern of repetitive, intrusive thoughts and behaviours that patients do not want to but feel they have to perform. Functional brain imaging revealed dysfunctional pathways in OCD involving the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and basal ganglia. Structural alterations in OCD have been discussed but analysis tools focussing on specific morphometric aspects such as cortical thickness have rarely been employed. We acquired MRI scans from 101 OCD patients and 95 healthy control subjects. FreeSurfer analysis software was employed to model the individual grey–white and pial surfaces to compute cortical thickness as our target measure. Relative to controls, OCD patients demonstrate cortical thinning in dorsal and subgenual ACC (false discovery rate corrected at p