TY - JOUR
T1 - Executive function in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
T2 - A worldwide mega-analysis of task-based functional neuroimaging data of the ENIGMA-OCD consortium
AU - ENIGMA-OCD consortium
AU - Džinalija, Nadža
AU - Veer, Ilya M
AU - Simpson, H Blair
AU - Ivanov, Iliyan
AU - Balachander, Srinivas
AU - Benedetti, Francesco
AU - Calesella, Federico
AU - Fitzsimmons, Sophie M D D
AU - Grützmann, Rosa
AU - Hagen, Kristen
AU - Hansen, Bjarne
AU - Heinzel, Stephan
AU - Huijser, Chaim
AU - Ipser, Jonathan
AU - Jaspers-Fayer, Fern
AU - de Joode, Niels T
AU - Kathmann, Norbert
AU - Kim, Minah
AU - Kwon, Jun Soo
AU - Liu, Wenjuan
AU - Lochner, Christine
AU - Martinez-Zalacain, Ignacio
AU - Menchon, Jose M
AU - Narayanaswamy, Janardhanan C
AU - Olivier, Ian S
AU - Postma, Tjardo S
AU - Reddy, Y C Janardhan
AU - Soriano-Mas, Carles
AU - Stewart, S Evelyn
AU - Thomopoulos, Sophia I
AU - Thorsen, Anders L
AU - Vai, Benedetta
AU - Veltman, Dick J
AU - Venkatasubramanian, Ganesan
AU - Voon, Valerie
AU - Waller, Lea
AU - van der Werf, Ysbrand D
AU - Zhao, Yi-Jie
AU - Stein, Dan J
AU - Thompson, Paul M
AU - van den Heuvel, Odile A
AU - Vriend, Chris
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2026 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of the Society of Biological Psychiatry. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
PY - 2026/6
Y1 - 2026/6
N2 - Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with impaired executive function and altered activity in associated neural circuits, contributing to reduced goal-directed behavior. To investigate neural activation during executive function, we conducted a mega-analysis in the ENIGMA-OCD consortium pooling individual participant data from 475 individuals with OCD and 345 healthy control participants across 15 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks collected worldwide. Methods: Individual participant data were uniformly processed using HALFpipe to construct voxelwise statistical images of executive processing and task load contrasts. Parameter estimates extracted from regions of interest were entered into multilevel Bayesian models to examine regional and whole-brain effects of diagnosis and, within OCD, the influence of medication status, symptom severity, and age of onset on task activation. Results: We observed a robust task activation pattern across individuals with OCD and control participants in executive processing regions across tasks. Relative to control participants, individuals with OCD showed moderate to very strong evidence of weaker activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, precuneus, frontal eye fields, and inferior parietal lobule during executive function (all positive posterior probabilities <0.1). Individuals with OCD also showed stronger activation in regions of the default mode network during executive function relative to control participants. We found little evidence for differential activation during executive function in task-positive regions related to disease onset, severity, and medication status. Conclusions: In the first mega-analysis of fMRI studies of executive function in OCD, we found strong evidence of weaker frontoparietal activation during executive function tasks. Our findings also suggest a failure of default mode network regions to appropriately disengage during task performance in OCD.
AB - Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with impaired executive function and altered activity in associated neural circuits, contributing to reduced goal-directed behavior. To investigate neural activation during executive function, we conducted a mega-analysis in the ENIGMA-OCD consortium pooling individual participant data from 475 individuals with OCD and 345 healthy control participants across 15 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks collected worldwide. Methods: Individual participant data were uniformly processed using HALFpipe to construct voxelwise statistical images of executive processing and task load contrasts. Parameter estimates extracted from regions of interest were entered into multilevel Bayesian models to examine regional and whole-brain effects of diagnosis and, within OCD, the influence of medication status, symptom severity, and age of onset on task activation. Results: We observed a robust task activation pattern across individuals with OCD and control participants in executive processing regions across tasks. Relative to control participants, individuals with OCD showed moderate to very strong evidence of weaker activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, precuneus, frontal eye fields, and inferior parietal lobule during executive function (all positive posterior probabilities <0.1). Individuals with OCD also showed stronger activation in regions of the default mode network during executive function relative to control participants. We found little evidence for differential activation during executive function in task-positive regions related to disease onset, severity, and medication status. Conclusions: In the first mega-analysis of fMRI studies of executive function in OCD, we found strong evidence of weaker frontoparietal activation during executive function tasks. Our findings also suggest a failure of default mode network regions to appropriately disengage during task performance in OCD.
KW - Clinical features
KW - Disorder effects
KW - Executive function
KW - Mega-analysis
KW - Obsessive-compulsive disorder
KW - Task-based fMRI
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105037673133
U2 - 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.02.007
DO - 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.02.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 41747881
SN - 2451-9022
VL - 11
SP - 749
EP - 759
JO - Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
JF - Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
IS - 6
ER -