Dataset Information

Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The sense of agency, or the belief in action causality, is an elusive construct that impacts day-to-day experience and decision-making. Despite its relevance in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, it is widely under-studied and remains difficult to measure objectively in patient populations. We developed and tested a novel cognitive measure of reward-dependent agency perception in an in-person and online cohort.

Methods

The in-person cohort consisted of 52 healthy control subjects and 20 subjects with depression and anxiety disorders (DA), including major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The online sample consisted of 254 participants. The task consisted of an effort implementation for monetary rewards with computerized visual feedback interference and trial-by-trial ratings of self versus other agency.

Results

All subjects across both cohorts demonstrated higher self-agency after receiving positive-win feedback, compared to negative-loss feedback when the level of computer inference was kept constant. Patients with DA showed reduced positive feedback-dependent agency compared to healthy controls. Finally, in our online sample, we found that higher self-agency following negative-loss feedback was associated with worse anhedonia symptoms.

Conclusion

Together this work suggests how positive and negative environmental information impacts the sense of self-agency in healthy subjects, and how it is perturbed in patients with depression and anxiety.

SUBMITTER: Mehta MM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10016695 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety.

Mehta Marishka M MM Na Soojung S Gu Xiaosi X Murrough James W JW Morris Laurel S LS

PloS one 20230315 3

<h4>Background</h4>The sense of agency, or the belief in action causality, is an elusive construct that impacts day-to-day experience and decision-making. Despite its relevance in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, it is widely under-studied and remains difficult to measure objectively in patient populations. We developed and tested a novel cognitive measure of reward-dependent agency perception in an in-person and online cohort.<h4>Methods</h4>The in-person cohort consisted of 52 healthy co ...[more]

PMID: 36920973

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Quantifying anxiety and depressive experiences permits individuals to calibrate where they are and monitor intervention-associated changes. eMindLog is a novel self-report measure for anxiety and depression that is grounded in psychology with an organizing structure based on neuroscience. OBJECTIVE:Our aim was to explore the psychometric properties of eMindLog in a nonclinical sample of subjects. METHODS:In a cross-sectional study of eMindLog, a convenience sample of 198 adults provided informed consent and completed eMindLog and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) as a reference. Brain systems (eg, negative and positive valence systems, cognitive systems) and their functional states that drive behavior are measured daily as emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Associated symptoms, quality of life, and functioning are assessed weekly. eMindLog offers ease of use and expediency, using mobile technology across multiple platforms, with dashboard reporting of scores. It enhances precision by providing distinct, nonoverlapping description of terms, and accuracy through guidance for scoring severity. RESULTS:eMindLog daily total score had a Cronbach alpha of .94. Pearson correlation coefficient for eMindLog indexes for anxiety and sadness/anhedonia were r=.66 (P<.001) and r=.62 (P<.001) contrasted with the HADS anxiety and depression subscales respectively. Of 195 subjects, 23 (11.8%) had cross-sectional symptoms above the threshold for Generalized Anxiety Disorder and 29 (29/195, 14.9%) for Major Depressive Disorder. Factor analysis supported the theoretically derived index derivatives for anxiety, anger, sadness, and anhedonia. CONCLUSIONS:eMindLog is a novel self-measurement tool to measure anxiety and depression, demonstrating excellent reliability and strong validity in a nonclinical population. Further studies in clinical populations are necessary for fuller validation of its psychometric properties. Self-measurement of anxiety and depressive symptoms with precision and accuracy has several potential benefits, including case detection, tracking change over time, efficacy assessment of interventions, and exploration of potential biomarkers.

Project description:Major depressive disorder is a leading cause of disability and significant mortality, yet mechanistic understanding remains limited. Over the past decade evidence has accumulated from case-control studies that depressive illness is associated with blunted reward activation in the basal ganglia and other regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex. However it is unclear whether this finding can be replicated in a large number of subjects. The functional anatomy of the medial prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia has been extensively studied and the former has excitatory glutamatergic projections to the latter. Reduced effect of glutamatergic projections from the prefrontal cortex to the nucleus accumbens has been argued to underlie motivational disorders such as depression, and many prominent theories of major depressive disorder propose a role for abnormal cortico-limbic connectivity. However, it is unclear whether there is abnormal reward-linked effective connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia related to depression. While resting state connectivity abnormalities have been frequently reported in depression, it has not been possible to directly link these findings to reward-learning studies. Here, we tested two main hypotheses. First, mood symptoms are associated with blunted striatal reward prediction error signals in a large community-based sample of recovered and currently ill patients, similar to reports from a number of studies. Second, event-related directed medial prefrontal cortex to basal ganglia effective connectivity is abnormally increased or decreased related to the severity of mood symptoms. Using a Research Domain Criteria approach, data were acquired from a large community-based sample of subjects who participated in a probabilistic reward learning task during event-related functional MRI. Computational modelling of behaviour, model-free and model-based functional MRI, and effective connectivity dynamic causal modelling analyses were used to test hypotheses. Increased depressive symptom severity was related to decreased reward signals in areas which included the nucleus accumbens in 475 participants. Decreased reward-related effective connectivity from the medial prefrontal cortex to striatum was associated with increased depressive symptom severity in 165 participants. Decreased striatal activity may have been due to decreased cortical to striatal connectivity consistent with glutamatergic and cortical-limbic related theories of depression and resulted in reduced direct pathway basal ganglia output. Further study of basal ganglia pathophysiology is required to better understand these abnormalities in patients with depressive symptoms and syndromes.

Project description:One of the core symptoms of major depressive disorder is anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure. In patients with major depressive disorder, a dysfunctional reward-system may exist, with blunted temporal difference reward-related learning signals in the ventral striatum and increased temporal difference-related (dopaminergic) activation in the ventral tegmental area. Anhedonia often remains as residual symptom during remission; however, it remains largely unknown whether the abovementioned reward systems are still dysfunctional when patients are in remission. We used a Pavlovian classical conditioning functional MRI task to explore the relationship between anhedonia and the temporal difference-related response of the ventral tegmental area and ventral striatum in medication-free remitted recurrent depression patients (n = 36) versus healthy control subjects (n = 27). Computational modelling was used to obtain the expected temporal difference errors during this task. Patients, compared to healthy controls, showed significantly increased temporal difference reward learning activation in the ventral tegmental area (PFWE,SVC = 0.028). No differences were observed between groups for ventral striatum activity. A group × anhedonia interaction [t(57) = -2.29, P = 0.026] indicated that in patients, higher anhedonia was associated with lower temporal difference activation in the ventral tegmental area, while in healthy controls higher anhedonia was associated with higher ventral tegmental area activation. These findings suggest impaired reward-related learning signals in the ventral tegmental area during remission in patients with depression. This merits further investigation to identify impaired reward-related learning as an endophenotype for recurrent depression. Moreover, the inverse association between reinforcement learning and anhedonia in patients implies an additional disturbing influence of anhedonia on reward-related learning or vice versa, suggesting that the level of anhedonia should be considered in behavioural treatments.

Dataset Information

Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety.

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