Endogenous Aβ and Exogenous Wheat Gluten Nanostructures: Understanding Peptide Self-Assembly in Disease.

Sensory processing is the ability to perceive, organize, and integrate sensory information, laying an important foundation for behavior (). Through this process, humans use sensory information to form continuous perceptual experiences. The sensory system is responsible for acquiring and processing information from the body and external environment and spans visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile modalities, all of which influence reflexive actions (). The processing of sensory information begins in the peripheral nervous system, continues in the brain, and eventually translates into behavioral responses. If processing of sensory information goes awry at any step, individuals may struggle to accurately interpret and/or react to the incoming sensory signals, leading to altered or inappropriate behavioral responses (; ). In many of the obsessive-compulsive and anxiety spectrum (OCA) disorders, which include, among others, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), hoarding disorder (HD), body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and social anxiety disorder (SAD), symptoms often involve sensory information, and in particular, visual cues. That is, individuals with OCD are thought to have attentional biases toward visual stimuli that are consistent with their primary fears (), while those with HD may rely on objects (or believe that they need to rely on objects) as visual cues to facilitate recall or as a memory aid (; ). Moreover, BDD is characterized by perceived flaws in visual appearance, whereby individuals with BDD may allocate more attention toward their own faces and others’ faces (; ), while interpretation of facial expressions, which are an essential visual stimuli in social contexts, may be altered in those with SAD (). It has been hypothesized that abnormalities in sensory—particularly visual—processing may have a prominent role in these disorders, and that dysfunctional visual processing at any stage, from lower order to higher order, may ultimately lead to the observed behavioral manifestations of the OCAs, including anxiety, obsessions, compulsions, overaccumulation of items, and avoidance. While there is a growing body of work that reviews the neuroimaging and ERP neural correlates in OCD (; ; ; ), HD (; ), BDD (; ; ), and SAD (; ; ), there has yet to be a comprehensive review that encompasses the OCAs from a diagnostic and transdiagnostic lens and specifically addresses visual processing. Considering this, the purpose of this scoping review is to summarize stimulus-locked visual ERP research with respect to OCA disorders, with the aim to evaluate ERP evidence supporting aberrant visual processing in the OCAs. Identifying electrophysiological characteristics is crucial for developing objective diagnostic assessments and mechanistic explanations of psychopathology across diagnoses in a transdiagnostic fashion. The dominant pathway for visual perception in humans begins in the eye and reaches the occipital cortex by way of the thalamus. Visual cues are initially acquired through the retina, where visual processing begins with presynaptic rod and cone photoreceptors, followed by a subsequent postsynaptic response mediated largely by bipolar cells (). From ganglion cells in the retina, visual information travels through the optic nerve and optic chiasm to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) where further information processing occurs. The LGN then projects to the primary visual cortex and extra-striate cortex for final visual processing (). Other visual pathways have been identified beyond the above canonical pathway through the LGN, most notably including direct connections from the retina to the superior colliculus, which in turn projects to a number of cortical and subcortical regions involved in motion perception, motivation, and motor behavior ().