Disgust-reduction evaluative conditioning (DREC) and brain stimulation in patients with contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder: a protocol for a randomized control trial.

Background: The negative emotional valence of a stimulus can be altered if paired with a pleasant stimulus, a phenomenon referred to as evaluative conditioning. Disgust, as a central emotion in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), particularly in the contamination subtype, may be an appropriate target for such a method. We know that disgust processing and OCD pathophysiology share in some brain areas, including the orbitofrontal cortex, as the neuromodulation techniques targeted in this area have been able to decrease OCD symptoms.