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Although individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCH) share overlapping characteristics and may perform similarly on many cognitive tasks, cognitive dysfunctions common to both disorders do not necessarily share the same underlying mechanisms. Decision-making is currently a major research interest for both ASD and SCH. The aim of the present study was to make direct comparisons of decision-making and disorder-specific underlying neuropsychological mechanisms between the two disorders. Thirty-seven participants with ASD, 46 patients with SCH, and 80 healthy controls (HC) were assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measures decision-making under ambiguity, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT), which measures decision-making under risk. The results revealed that both the ASD and SCH groups had deficits for both the IGT and the GDT compared with the HC. More importantly, in the IGT, participants with ASD displayed a preference for deck A, indicating that they had more sensitivity to the magnitude of loss than to the frequency of loss, whereas patients with SCH displayed a preference for deck B, indicating that they showed more sensitivity to the frequency of loss than to the magnitude of loss. In the GDT, the impaired performance might be due to the deficits in executive functions in patients with SCH, whereas the impaired performance might be due to the deficits in feedback processing in participants with ASD. These findings demonstrate that there are similar impairments in decision-making tasks between ASD and SCH; however, these two disorders may have different impairment mechanisms.

This study aimed to investigate whether deficits in decision making were potential endophenotype markers for OCD considering different phases of the disease. Fifty-seven non-medicated OCD patients (nmOCD), 77 medicated OCD patients (mOCD), 48 remitted patients with OCD (rOCD) and 115 healthy controls were assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measured decision making under ambiguity, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT), which measured decision making under risk. While the three patients groups showed impaired performance on the IGT compared with healthy controls, all patients showed intact performance on the GDT. Furthermore, the rOCD patients showed a preference for deck B, indicating that they showed more sensitivity to the frequency of loss than to the magnitude of loss, whereas the mOCD patients showed a preference for deck A, indicating that they had more sensitivity to the magnitude of loss than to the frequency of loss. These data suggested that OCD patients had trait-related impairments in decision making under ambiguity but not under risk, and that dissociation of decision making under ambiguity and under risk is an appropriate potential neurocognitive endophenotype for OCD. The subtle but meaningful differences in decision making performance between the OCD groups require further study.

BackgroundA few studies have been conducted on the relationship between cerebellar volume and emotional memory or clinical severity in major depressive disorder (MDD). In this study, we aimed to compare the volume and density of the cerebellar gray matter (GM) in patients with MDD and in healthy controls (HCs) and explore the association between these cerebellar parameters and measurements of emotional memory and clinical severity.MethodVoxel‐based morphometry (VBM) and Individual Brain Atlases using Statistical Parametric Mapping (IBASPM) were used to assess GM density and volume in the cerebellum, respectively, in patients with MDD and the HCs. Indicators of emotional memory performance were measured, including the hit rate (HR), rate of false alarm (FA), precision (Pr = HR − FA) and emotional memory enhancement [∆Pr = Pr(emotion) − Pr(neutral)] values. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores were used to measure the severity of depression.ResultsIn the patients with MDD, the GM density was decreased in three cerebellar cortical regions and increased in three cerebellar cortical regions (p < .005). The GM volumes in eight cerebellar cortical regions were significantly smaller in the patients with MDD than in the HC subjects (p < .05). In the patients with MDD, the GM volume was correlated with the ∆Pr (p < .05) in two cerebellar cortical regions. The BDI scores were significantly correlated with the relative GM densities (p < .05) in 5 cerebellar cortical regions, and the GM volumes in 13 cerebellar cortical regions were correlated with the BDI scores in patients with MDD.ConclusionsEmotional memory and the severity of depressive symptoms are associated with structural changes in both the posterior and anterior GM regions in the cerebellum in patients with MDD. These findings could be useful for improving our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying emotional memory and explaining the abnormalities of the neural correlates that are associated with MDD.

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