Obsessive compulsive disorder and basal ganglia dysfunction.

There is increasing evidence that selective basal ganglia dysfunction underlies obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Recent neuroanatomical, neuropharmacological, and behavioural studies indicate a complex perceptual and cognitive role for the basal ganglia in addition to their more well-accepted motor functions. In addition, obsessive-compulsive symptoms in certain syndromes and in individual cases with basal ganglia disease, response to psychosurgery, and new antiobsessional drugs and recent brain-imaging studies all support such a model. OCD may represent the inappropriate triggering of genetically stored and learned behaviours by the striatum as the primary cause of OCD.