Anhedonia and anxiety underlying depressive symptomatology have distinct effects on reward-based decision-making.

ABSTRACT: Depressive pathology, which includes both heightened negative affect (e.g., anxiety) and reduced positive affect (e.g., anhedonia), is known to be associated with sub-optimal decision-making, particularly in uncertain environments. Here, we use a computational approach to quantify and disambiguate how individual differences in these affective measures specifically relate to different aspects of learning and decision-making in reward-based choice behavior. Fifty-three individuals with a range of depressed mood completed a two-armed bandit task, in which they choose between two arms with fixed but unknown reward rates. The decision-making component, which chooses among options based on current expectations about reward rates, is modeled by two different decision policies: a learning-independ

SUBMITTER: Harle KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5653291 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature