Probabilistic Reinforcement Learning in Patients With Schizophrenia: Relationships to Anhedonia and Avolition.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Anhedonia (a reduced experience of pleasure) and avolition (a reduction in goal-directed activity) are common features of schizophrenia that have substantial effects on functional outcome, but are poorly understood and treated. Here, we examined whether alterations in reinforcement learning may contribute to these symptoms in schizophrenia by impairing the translation of reward information into goal-directed action.

Methods

38 stable outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 37 healthy controls underwent fMRI during a probabilistic stimulus selection reinforcement learning task with dissociated choice- and feedback-related activation, followed by a behavioral transfer task allowing separate assessment of learning from positive versus negative

SUBMITTER: Dowd EC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5098503 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature