Maladaptive Pawlowsche Verzerrungen in Entscheidungsverhalten und ihr Zusammenhang mit Zwanghaftigkeit – ein mathematischer Modellierungsansatz
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
This research project examined motivational biases in decision-making with a focus on their maladaptive potential in the context of clinical psychopathology and compulsivity in particular. It also inspected the potential of regulating these biases via dopaminergic manipulation. The goal was to improve and significantly extend our understanding of those mechanisms and what controls motivational biases. To this end, we employed a model-based approach in both subprojects to be able to 1) characterize the latent mechanisms underlying cognitive control over motivational biases in decision-making and 2) depict the nature of the impact of a frontal dopaminergic challenge on decision parameters. For sub-project I, we could show that contrary to our initial expectation, a transdiagnostic dimension of compulsivity was not associated with increased motivational biases in decisionmaking. Instead, we found an overall detrimental effect of elevated compulsivity levels potentially driven by decreased feedback sensitivity and aberrant learning rates. In contrast, we found a very interesting and surprising effect for individuals with higher levels of anxiety and depression. Our work indicated that individuals with higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms indeed showed improved performance on the motivational Go NoGo task. This was driven by a selective improvement of performance on bias-incongruent trials, which was best explained by including a parameter capturing cognitive control over motivational biases in a computational reinforcement learning model. Sub-project II was the first study in healthy individuals demonstrating that a specific frontal dopamine manipulation, temporarily elevating cortical dopamine level, could lead to a reduction of motivational biases in behaviour. Follow-up studies are needed to determine whether we might see similar pharmacological effects of tolcapone in patient samples. If that was the case, we should examine tolcapone’s relevance of serving as a therapeutic agent in impulsive and compulsive disorders such as OCD or gambling disorder. This seems especially relevant given previous findings indicating that tolcapone might reduce impulsive and compulsive symptoms. To fully evaluate the clinical relevance of tolcapone, there is a dire need for longitudinal studies monitoring the development of clinical symptoms under tolcapone administration in clinical populations. In conclusion, both projects have provided significant contributions to the study of motivational biases. Each project on its own provided vital new insights into potential mechanisms underlying motivational biases and/ or their suppression. Sub-project I did so by exploring a new computational model of the value of control in the context of clinical psychopathology. Sub-project II demonstrated for the first time that a highly localized drug manipulation could achieve a temporary suppression of choice biases. Future work will have to determine the replicability as well as the clinical relevance of those findings.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- (2019) Can psychiatric symptom dimensions predict motivational biases in decision making? Motivation and Cognitive Control Meeting (MCC), Berlin, Germany
Scholz, V., Algermissen, J., Rostami, Kandroodi, M., den Ouden, H. E.M.
- “Psychiatric symptom dimensions and decision-making. Dimensional approaches to psychiatry”. Clinical Workshop for Dutch Neuropsychologists, Hilvarenbeck, The Netherlands
Vanessa Scholz
- „Can motivational biases help predict clinical symptoms? A neurocomputational and pharmacological approach“. Regional FENS Meeting, Belgrade, Serbia
Vanessa Scholz
- „The clinical relevance of the neurocomputational processes underlying motivational biases“, Neurocomputational mechanisms of motivation and decision making - A transdiagnostic approach in basic and clinical neuroscience at the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting, Lunteren, The Netherlands
Vanessa Scholz
