dysfunction. Brain imaging people with
OCD doing this kind of task should help so-
lidify this hypothesis. “Mental disorders
are brain disorders,” Vaghi says “There’s
still a lot of stigma because we think psy-
chiatric patients are crazy and making
things up, whereas we wouldn’t dare say a
person with cancer is inventing it,” she
adds. “Linking these kinds of behavior to
brain mechanisms should help.”
The study illustrates the potential of
computational psychiatry, Vaghi says. “It’s
an example of how integrating computa-
tional and clinical aspects is a really pow-
erful approach,” she adds. “Without com-
putational modeling we wouldnʼ t have
been able to pin down exactly what this be-
havior relates to—we were able to under-
stand which component of the model ex-
plains the behavior.”
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