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Symposia

Adult - Anxiety

Harnessing Novel Quantitative, Technological, and Experimental Paradigms to Empower Investigations of Risk Factors Across the Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum

1 - (SYM 13) Using Bayesian Hierarchical Drift Diffusion Modeling to Better Understand Difficulty Discarding in Hoarding Disorder

Friday, November 15, 2024
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EST
Location: Regency Ballroom C1, Second Floor Mezzanine, Loews Hotel
Abstract Body
Individuals with hoarding disorder (HD) appear to have problems with decision-making and other executive functions, but traditional neuropsychological and cognitive testing have largely failed to clarify the nature of these decision-making deficits. Here, we sought novel insights into the nature of information processing abnormalities believed to underlie difficulty discarding in HD by using Bayesian hierarchical drift diffusion modeling (HDDM) to a) determine whether individuals with HD differ on common DDM decision-making parameters when making discarding decisions relative to healthy controls, and b) link DDM parameters to neural activity during discarding-related decisions. We focused on three DDM parameters: 1) decision threshold (“a” parameter), which refers to the amount of information needed to arrive at a decision, which we predicted would be higher in HD; 2) drift rate (“v” parameter), which reflects how quickly information is accumulated in order to reach a decision, which we predicted to be slower in HD; and 3) bias (“z” parameter), which determines whether there is a bias in favor of one decision over another, where we expected a bias towards keep vs. discard decisions in those with HD.

Participants were 71 individuals with a primary diagnosis of HD and 43 age- and sex-matched HC participants who completed a decision-making discarding task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants viewed pictures of objects of varying value, some of which were objectively Trash (e.g., rotten banana) and others which had at least some minor monetary or practical Value (e.g., coffee mug), and indicated whether they would keep or discard the object as part of “spring cleaning.” Results showed that the HD group significantly differed from HC in the directions hypothesized on all three parameters for Value items (Bayesian model Ps ≥ 0.96), but only on the “v” parameter for Trash items (P = 1.0). DDM parameters were more strongly associated with activity in frontal regions (cingulate, prefrontal cortex) in the HD group relative to HC. Findings suggest that individuals with HD might not have meaningful decision-making impairments for obvious trash items, but struggle to decide on whether to keep or discard items with even minimal value. In line with the symposium theme, findings will be discussed in terms of current neurobiological models of HD and how best to leverage novel statistical approaches to advance the HD research and treatment fields.