Compulsive Hoarders Use Their Brains Differently


Hoarding — the “accumulation of something for preservation or future use” — becomes a problem when you can’t get rid of things even when they have no “future use”. But if you’re a hoarder, it might take more than a good clean-up strategy to help: research suggests that compulsive hoarding is identifiable through distinct patterns of brain activity.

Picture by Unnar Amir Bjarnsson

The Conversation reports on a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry which identified distinctly different patterns of brain activity in 43 patients with “hoarding disorder”:

Compared with patients who had OCD and the healthy individuals, researchers found that patients with hoarding disorder exhibited abnormal activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula. When deciding about items that did not belong to them, patients with hoarding disorder showed relatively lower activity in those brain regions. However, when deciding about items that did belong to them, these regions showed “excessive functional magnetic resonance imaging signals” compared with the other two groups, according to study results.

Knowing this doesn’t in itself provide treatment options for compulsive hoarders. However, it does suggest that “‘tough love” isn’t necessarily the best strategy for dealing with a hoarder; their brains are already churning along in high gear.

Need to tackle clutter issues around your place? Check out our top 10 ways to effectively clear clutter.

What does a hoarder’s brain look like? Study calls for rethink on treatment [The Conversation]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


Leave a Reply