Examining associations between psychosis risk, social anhedonia, and performance of striatum-related behavioral tasks.

Abstract

Both psychosis and anhedonia have been associated to some extent with striatal functioning. The current study examined whether either psychosis risk or social anhedonia was associated with performance on three tasks related to striatal functioning. Psychosis risk participants had extremely elevated Perceptual Aberration/Magical Ideation (PerMag) scores (n=69), with 43% of psychosis risk participants also having semi-structured interview-assessed psychotic-like experiences which further heightens their risk of psychotic disorder (Chapman, Chapman, Kwapil, Eckblad, & Zinser, 1994). Compared to both extremely elevated Social Anhedonia (n=60) and control (n=68) groups, the PerMag group exhibited poorer performance on two of the striatum-related tasks, the Weather Prediction Task (WPT) and the Learned Irrelevance Paradigm, but not on Finger Tapping. In addition, PerMag participants with psychotic-like experiences were especially impaired on the WPT. Overall, this study arguably provides the first evidence that psychosis risk but not social anhedonia is associated with performance on the WPT, a task thought to be strongly associated with activation in the associative striatum, and also suggests that the WPT might be especially useful as a behavioral measure of psychosis risk.

Associations between Electrophysiological Evidence of Reward and Punishment-Based Learning and Psychotic Experiences and Social Anhedonia in At-Risk Groups

“…Similarly, other behavioral research also has found that increased dopamine in the striatum is related to increased sensitivity to learning from rewards (Frank et al, 2004). Hence, the current evidence of PE being associated with greater sensitivity to learning from unexpected reward than from unexpected punishment is consistent with increased dopamine in the striatum in people with psychosis risk (Karcher et al, 2015b).…”

“…In contrast to the PE group, the social anhedonia group did not differ from the control group in their behavioral performance or in their FRN for unexpected trials on the RLT, suggesting that some aspects of reward and punishment-based learning may to some extent be intact in people with extremely elevated social anhedonia who are at increased risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (Karcher et al, 2015b;Padrao et al, 2013). Future research should continue to examine whether some particular aspect of reward and punishment-based learning, perhaps reward anticipation (Dowd and Barch, 2012;Juckel et al, 2006), is associated with anhedonia in at risk groups.…”

“…All study participants were Introduction to Psychology students who participated for course credit after taking part in a separate behavioral testing session (Karcher et al, 2015b; see Supplementary Methods for recruitment details). In the current study, there were no significant differences between the three groups on any demographic variables (eg, sex, age, or ethnicity).…”

“…After completion of the questionnaire measures and the SIPS (Karcher et al, 2015b), eligible participants were invited to participate in the current study. After electrode placement while in a soundproof recording chamber, participants practiced and completed the RLT (as well as another, unrelated task not reported here), presented using E-Prime software (Psychology Software Tools, Inc., 2006).…”

An electrophysiological investigation of emotional abnormalities in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders

“…The current ERP study participants were Introductory to Psychology students who participated for course credit after taking part in a separate behavioral testing session (Karcher, Martin, & Kerns, 2015). As can be seen in Table 1, there were no significant between group differences on any demographic variable we assessed.…”