Behavioral and Functional Animal Models of OCD

A number of different animal models of obsessive-compulsive behavior have been proposed over the past half century, and recent veterinary models are reviewed in Chapter 3 of this volume. The current chapter focuses on a particular set of experiments conducted with mongrel dogs almost half a century ago. Those experiments, led by Richard L. Solomon and his colleagues and students, were among the most important studies ever conducted on behavioral theory of avoidance learning. Unfortunately, much of that work has been forgotten, and its relevance to understanding obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has not been fully appreciated. At the time these investigations were conducted and published, neither their authors nor clinicians of the period saw the full relevance of their work to OCD as it has come to be conceptualized over the ensuing years. Solomon and his colleagues did indeed see their work and results as possibly having some relevance to human obsessions and compulsions, and a few clinicians also made connections to the human malady. Today, we have the benefit of hindsight wherein we can look again at this classic series of studies and view them from our current perspective on how to think about obsessions and compulsions and their interaction within an avoidance learning formulation.