Depression is associated with reduced outcome sensitivity in a dual valence, magnitude learning task.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Learning from rewarded and punished choices is perturbed in depressed patients, suggesting that abnormal reinforcement learning may be a cognitive mechanism of the illness. However, previous studies have disagreed about whether this behavior is produced by alterations in the rate of learning or sensitivity to experienced outcomes. This previous work has generally assessed learning in response to binary outcomes of one valence, rather than to both rewarding and punishing continuous outcomes.

Methods

A novel drifting reward and punishment magnitude reinforcement-learning task was administered to patients with current (n = 40) and remitted depression (n = 39), and healthy volunteers (n = 40) to capture potential differences in learning behavior.

SUBMITTER: Pulcu E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11443165 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature