Anhedonia and sensitivity to punishment in schizophrenia, depression and opiate use disorder

Ossola, Paolo, Garrett, Neil, Biso, Letizia, Bishara, Anthony and Marchesi, Carlo (2023) Anhedonia and sensitivity to punishment in schizophrenia, depression and opiate use disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 330. pp. 319-328. ISSN 0165-0327

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Abstract

Background: From a behavioural perspective anhedonia is defined as diminished interest in the engagement of pleasurable activities. Despite its presence across a range of psychiatric disorders, the cognitive processes that give rise to anhedonia remain unclear. Methods: Here we examine whether anhedonia is associated with learning from positive and negative outcomes in patients diagnosed with major depression, schizophrenia and opiate use disorder alongside a healthy control group. Responses in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test – a task associated with healthy prefrontal cortex function – were fitted to the Attentional Learning Model (ALM) which separates learning from positive and negative feedback. Results: Learning from punishment, but not from reward, was negatively associated with anhedonia beyond other socio-demographic, cognitive and clinical variables. This impairment in punishment sensitivity was also associated with faster responses following negative feedback, independently of the degree of surprise. Limitations: Future studies should test the longitudinal association between punishment sensitivity and anhedonia also in other clinical populations controlling for the effect of specific medications. Conclusions: Together the results reveal that anhedonic subjects, because of their negative expectations, are less sensitive to negative feedbacks; this might lead them to persist in actions leading to negative outcomes.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Author statement: Neil Garrett is funded by a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship (209108/Z/17/Z).
Uncontrolled Keywords: anhedonia,computational psychiatry,learning,punishment,reward,clinical psychology,psychiatry and mental health ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3203
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2023 16:30
Last Modified: 06 Feb 2025 11:21
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/91424
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2023.02.120

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