Hoarding Disorder (AD) has become so popular in recent times that there are already television programs that are dedicated to showing cases of people who accumulate objects, food, animals, plants or all these things together; An example of this is the “Accumulators” program that is included in the Discovery Home & Health programming.
This disorder is characterized by:
1. A persistent difficulty in discarding or parting with personal possessions, even those that are apparently useless or of limited value, given to strong impulses to keep items, anxiety and/or indecision associated with discarding.
- Symptoms result in the accumulation of a significant number of possessions that fill and clutter areas of the home, work or other personal environments (for example, offices, vehicles, patios) and prevent normal use of the space. If some rooms in the house are tidy, it is only because of the efforts of others (family members, authorities, etc.) to keep these areas free of possessions.
- The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or problems in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (including maintaining a safe environment for self and others).
- Cumulative symptoms are not due to a medical illness (for example, brain injury or cerebrovascular disease).
-
Cumulative symptoms are not restricted to symptoms of other mental disorders (for example, hoarding due to obsession in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, lack of motivation in Major Depressive Disorder, hallucinations in Schizophrenia or another Psychotic Disorder, cognitive deficits in Dementia, restricted interests in Autistic Disorder, food storage in the ).
If you value articles like this, consider supporting us by becoming a Pro subscriber. Subscribers enjoy access to members-only articles, materials, and webinars.
<
p dir=”ltr”>Hoarding Disorder, which was previously considered a subtype of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), has been proposed as a unique diagnostic entity in the DSM-V. Current explanatory models of TA emphasize problems with decision making, attachment to possessions, and poor insight. In addition to this, neuroimaging studies have suggested abnormalities in frontal regions of the brain.
The investigation
A group of researchers, led by , set out to examine the neural mechanisms of the decision-making problem in AD, in patients with well-defined AD. In turn, the researchers compared the latter with patients suffering from OCD and with a control group of healthy people.
The study included the participation of 107 adults, 43 with AD, 31 with OCD and 33 healthy subjects. These participants had to decide whether to keep personal possessions or discard them from November 2006 to August 2010. Neural activity was measured using Functional Magnetic Resonance images () during which decisions had to be made about keeping a possession or discarding it, in time. real.
The results
When comparing the group of participants with OCD and the group with AD, the latter exhibited abnormal activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula that was stimulus-dependent. Specifically, when they had to decide about objects that did not belong to them, patients with AD showed relatively low activity in those brain regions. However, when the decision was about objects that did belong to them, these regions showed excessive signals in the MRI images, compared to the other two groups. Such differences in neural functioning were significantly correlated with severe accumulation and self-ratings of indecision and feelings of “not right” among patients with AD that could not be attributed to OCD or depressive symptoms.
The researchers concluded that their findings suggest a biphasic abnormality in anterior cingulate cortex and insula functioning in patients with Hoarding Disorder; These abnormalities are related to problems identifying the emotional meaning of a stimulus, generating appropriate emotional responses or regulating the affective state during the decision-making process.
Fountain: ;