DIFFERENTIATING AUTOGENOUS AND REACTIVE OBSESSION USING ERROR-RELATED BRAIN ACTIVITY

Abstract

Cognitive control enables individuals to monitor, detect, and adapt to conflict and errors, yet in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), this process is often dysregulated. Despite robust evidence linking OCD to heightened error-related brain responses, behavioral patterns such as RT, accuracy, and post-error slowing (PES) have yielded inconsistent findings, possibly due to a lack of consideration of symptom heterogeneity and task dynamics. Using a Flanker task in a high-conflict setting, this study employed a dimensional approach and single-trial analysis to investigate how obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptom severity and obsession subtypes, autogenous (AO) and reactive (RO), interact with cognitive control at both behavioral and neurocognitive levels. Results showed that overall, OC symptom severity did not predict mean RT or accuracy alone but interacted significantly with RT to disrupt the typical speed–accuracy trade-off. High-OC individuals who responded slowly did not achieve improved accuracy and instead exhibited heightened error-related negativity (ERN), suggesting maladaptive over-monitoring. These effects were further elaborated by subtype: Unlike RO, AO symptoms predicted greater ERN amplitudes and longer PES under slow response conditions, reflecting a ruminative, internally focused error-monitoring loop. While both AO and RO subtypes disrupted adaptive slowing, only AO aligned with exaggerated neural conflict processing. Contrary to predictions, ERN and PES did not covary directly as a function of OC symptoms or subtype severity, suggesting dissociable mechanisms of early error detection and post-error adjustment. Collectively, this finding, behavioral similarity, but neurocognitive dissociation of AO and RO, represents the key contribution of the current study and underscores the importance of not treating OC symptom profiles as monolithic. While both AO and RO may lead to similar observable behaviors under task constraints, only AO is associated with the exaggerated internal error monitoring thought to underlie ruminative doubt and persistent self-evaluation in OCD, as emphasized in neurocognitive models of the disorder.