Author contributions F.W. and S.B. performed the experiments, analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. M.G. designed the fusion strategy. E.B. and M.O. were involved in the experimental design. M.O. guided the project and finalized the manuscript, which was approved by all authors. competing interests E.B. and M.G. are co-inventors of EP patent application 15 162 192.7 filed on 1 April 2015, and of EP patent application 15 174 342.4 filed on 26 June 2015, by Goethe-University Frankfurt, describing short-chain acyl-CoA producing FAS variants. There are no other competing interests.
Little research has been done to explore the integrity of emotion-based decision-making performance in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the current study, performance on two decision-making tasks with both positive and negative reinforcement, the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the variant Iowa Gambling Task (vIGT), and measures of mood symptoms, were compared between U.S. active-duty soldiers diagnosed with PTSD (n = 23) and soldiers with no PTSD (n = 23). The results revealed that the PTSD group, when compared to controls, reported significantly higher anxiety and depression symptoms. The PTSD group showed similar behavioral performance as controls on the standard IGT but failed to choose advantageously on the vIGT, which has been shown to reflect hypersensitivity to punishment. Medicated participants, being treated with antidepressants, showed significantly better overall performance on the IGT but not on the vIGT compared to nonmedicated participants. The results suggest that soldiers being treated for PTSD have a unique decision-making pattern that may be attributed to difficulty in processing delayed reward when presented with immediate punishment.
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