What happens in the brain when you “check” something

Check several times that you have locked your car, “check” your keys in your purse, look at your watch several times, check that you have not forgotten anything while shopping … Checking tasks seem trivial to us. as they are carried out daily. But how does our brain organize itself to carry out all these messy “check ups”? French researchers from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research wondered about this cerebral mechanism.

For the purposes of the study, they fitted the macaques with electrodes in order to check their cerebral activity and in particular, the frontal cortex, the area at the front of the brain. Emmanuel Procyk’s team, co-author of the study, examined the activity of 411 neurons from two regions of the frontal cortex, known to be involved in decision-making, namely the cingulate cortexmiddle and lateral prefrontal cortex.

The middle cingulate cortex, site of the checks

To observe what happens during the checks, the monkeys were given two options during the test: they could work on a task of visual memorization or check a gauge that shows how long you have to wait before you can claim a reward. “Correctly linking the steps of the main task raised the bar,” Inserm explains in a press release.

When the macaques checked the level of the gauge, neurons in the middle cingulate cortex, closely followed by neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex, activated. “The neural pathways for verification are different from those involved in other types of decisions”, such as responding to a visual memorization exercise, points out Inserm.

A track for the treatment of OCD

Why these experiences? These results provide an interesting avenue for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The successive checks that people with OCD usually do would be linked to a disruption of this brain mechanismthe.

Therefore, regulating this failing cingulate cortex in patients would be the key to correcting these OCD. This idea is already being tested by the Americans. On the Inserm side, a project is under study. This would involve “precisely identifying the areas of the cingulate cortex involved in OCD in humans, on twenty volunteers, and evaluating the impact of an alteration of the corresponding cingulate cortex in macaques”, specifies Emmanuel Procyk. .

The results should be known in 2017-2018 and could lead, if they are conclusive, to new treatments for OCD. To be continued.

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