Brain circuits and decision-making in obsessive-compulsive disorder
Official title: Neurocomputational mechanisms and connectivity dynamics underlying obsessive-compulsive disorder and phenotypical differentiations
Funded at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai · NIH-11266202 · Data updated 2026-11-12
Researchers will use brain scans and decision-making tasks to understand why people with obsessive-compulsive disorder have rigid thoughts and behaviors.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (New York, United States) |
| Project start | June 10, 2024 |
| Project end | January 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $844,081 |
| NIH project number | 5R01MH133625-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11266202 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Adults diagnosed with OCD who can undergo MRI scans and complete computerized decision-making tasks, along with matched healthy volunteers, are the ideal participants.
✕Less likely to help
People who cannot have MRI scans (for example due to metal implants, pregnancy, or severe claustrophobia), young children, or those unable to complete task procedures may not benefit from participation.
What this research studies
If you join, you'll have an MRI while doing decision-making tasks and complete symptom questionnaires. Researchers will examine how brain regions, especially cortico-striatal circuits, connect and change during tasks and will apply computational models to describe decision patterns. They aim to link specific network activity and model parameters to different OCD symptom types and levels of severity. The study plans to enroll about 140 people to test a theory that overly stable brain dynamics cause the rigid thoughts and actions seen in OCD.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: Could help pinpoint brain-circuit signatures of OCD that improve diagnosis and guide more personalized treatments.
How similar studies have gone: Prior fMRI and computational research has implicated cortico-striatal circuits in OCD, but combining connectivity dynamics with multi-model decision analyses is relatively novel.
Where this research is happening
-
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Fiore, Vincenzo Guido — Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Study coordinator: Fiore, Vincenzo Guido
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.