For the 2.2 million American adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the need to perform routines and rituals over and over cause distress, getting in the way of everyday life. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK say compulsions from the disorder may derive from misfiring of the brain’s control system.

Share on Pinterest Compulsions stemming from OCD may arise due to the brain’s control system misfiring, according to the latest study.

They publish their results in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

According to the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have frequent upsetting thoughts that they try to control by repeating certain rituals or behaviors.

Though healthy people also have rituals – including checking to see that the stove is off before leaving the house – people with OCD obsessively perform their rituals, even though they interfere with daily life.

“While some habits can make our life easier, like automating the act of preparing your morning coffee, others go too far and can take control of our lives in a much more insidious way, shaping our preferences, beliefs, and in the case of OCD, even our fears,” notes Prof. Trevor Robbins, a study author from the Department of Psychology at Cambridge.

He and Dr. Claire Gillan led a team of researchers to investigate the idea that compulsions in OCD result from an “overactive habit-system.”

To do so, they scanned 37 OCD patients’ brains and those of 33 healthy controls who did not have the disorder as they all performed a pedal-pressing behavioral activity to avoid mild electric shocks to the wrist.