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The authors assessed the functioning of mesolimbic and striatal areas involved in reward-based spatial learning in unmedicated adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Functional MRI blood-oxygen-level-dependent response was compared in 33 unmedicated adults with OCD and 33 healthy, age-matched comparison subjects during a reward-based learning task that required learning to use extramaze cues to navigate a virtual eight-arm radial maze to find hidden rewards. The groups were compared in their patterns of brain activation associated with reward-based spatial learning versus a control condition in which rewards were unexpected because they were allotted pseudorandomly to experimentally prevent learning.

Both groups learned to navigate the maze to find hidden rewards, but group differences in neural activity during navigation and reward processing were …