Right-deviating prismatic adaptation reduces obsessions in a community sample

Barbara Magnani; Francesca Frassinetti; Christian Franceschini; Giancarlo Dimaggio; Alessandro Musetti

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1025379

Right-deviating prismatic adaptation reduces obsessions in a community sample

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 21:13:1025379. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1025379. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Barbara Magnani¹, Francesca Frassinetti^{2

3}, Christian Franceschini⁴, Giancarlo Dimaggio⁵, Alessandro Musetti¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
² Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
³ Unit of Recovery and Functional Rehabilitation, Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri IRCCS, Institute of Castel Goffredo, Mantua, Italy.
⁴ Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
⁵ Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Background and aims: Patients with obsessive-compulsive (OC) disorder are impaired in disengaging attention from negative valence stimuli and show an attentional bias toward the right space. This pattern in OC disorder is similar to the impaired disengagement of attention from stimuli in the ipsilesional space as a consequence of a right-hemispheric cerebral lesion in patients with neglect, suggesting a right hemispheric dysfunction in patients with OC disorder. The attentional impairment in patients with neglect is reduced by a visuomotor procedure, such as prismatic adaptation (PA) with right-deviating lenses. Thus, here, we explored whether right-deviating PA is also effective in reducing OC psychological symptoms.

Methods: Participants with a high rate of OC symptoms completed self-report measures of such symptoms before and after right- or left-deviating PA.

Results: Right-deviating PA, and not left-deviating PA, reduced OC symptoms more prominently on obsessions than compulsions.

Conclusion: Results support the idea that right-deviating PA might be considered an effective technique to modulate OC symptoms. This has implications for theories about the underlying mechanisms of OC symptoms and the consideration of PA as a complementary procedure to psychological treatments.

Keywords: obsessions; obsessive-compulsive symptoms; patients with neglect; prismatic adaptation; spatial attention.