LONDON: Scientists have located an area in the brain that fails to "kick-in" for people with obsessive compulsive disorder and those at risk of developing the condition.The discovery could allow experts to diagnose the disorder much earlier and better track how treatments are working.

"The main finding is that in people with obsessive compulsive disorder and their unaffected relatives, part of their orbitofrontal cortex didn't kick in on line as it should have," said Samuel Chamberlain, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.

OCD is a psychiatric anxiety disorder that tends to run in families and is marked by recurrent and persistent thoughts and impulses, such as uncontrollable and repeated hand washing.

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