Steeper discounting of delayed rewards in schizophrenia but not first-degree relatives

Abstract

Excessive discounting of future rewards has been related to a variety of risky behaviors and adverse clinical conditions. Prior work examining delay discounting in schizophrenia suggests an elevated discount rate. However, it remains uncertain whether this reflects the disease process itself or an underlying genetic vulnerability, whether it is selective for delay discounting or reflects pervasive changes in decision-making, and whether it is driven by specific clinical dimensions such as cognitive impairment. Here we investigated delay discounting, as well as loss aversion and risk aversion, in three groups: schizophrenia (SZ), unaffected first-degree family members (FM), and controls without a family history of psychosis (NC). SZ had elevated discounting, without changes in loss aversion or risk aversion. Contrary to expectations, the FM group did not show an intermediate phenotype in discounting. Higher discount rates correlated with lower cognitive performance on verbal reasoning, but this did not explain elevated discount rates in SZ. Group differences were driven primarily by the non-smoking majority of the sample. This study provides further evidence for elevated discounting in schizophrenia, and demonstrates that steeper discounting is not necessarily associated with familial risk, cannot be wholly accounted for by cognitive deficits, and is not attributable to smoking-related impulsivity.

Striatal dopamine D2 receptors regulate effort but not value-based decision making and alter the dopaminergic encoding of cost

“…In such studies, costs typically are a combination of physical effort and delay. In delay discounting tasks that do not involve physical effort, patients also show steeper discounting [44][45][46][47]. In this study, we determined that in mice, an increase in striatal D2 receptor expression results in a similar increase in sensitivity to costs.…”

Neural and behavioral correlates of episodic memory are associated with temporal discounting in older adults

“…On each of the 51 trials in this task (Pehlivanova et al, 2018;Senecal, Wang, Thompson, & Kable, 2012;Yu et al, 2017), participants chose between a small amount of money available immediately, and a larger amount of money available at a specified delay. The delayed outcome was always one of three amounts ($25, $30, $35).…”

Future thinking is related to lower delay discounting than recent thinking, regardless of the magnitude of the reward, in individuals with schizotypy

“…Therefore, we may speculate that EFT is effective to modulate delay discounting in individuals with schizotypy who are in the schizophrenia spectrum (Ettinger et al, 2014). Patients with schizophrenia have also been found to show delay discounting deficits (L. Wang et al, 2018;Weller et al, 2014;Yu et al, 2017). EFT may putatively be adapted to improve delay discounting in schizophrenia, further studies are needed to examine this issue.…”

“…Schizophrenia is a serious worldwide psychiatric disease. Schizophrenia patients have severe cognitive and behavioural impairments; impulsive decision-making is one of these impairments (Hoptman et al, 2002;Larquet, Coricelli, Opolczynski, & Thibaut, 2010;Ouzir, 2013;Yu et al, 2017). Impulsive decision-making is associated with clinical behavioural symptoms (e.g., addiction, poor treatment adherence, interpersonal conflicts, and cannot wait for future rewards), it can also predict unhealthy life habits and poor cognitive performances, such as excessive calorie consumption, alcohol dependence, and low working memory capacity (Amlung, Petker, Jackson, Balodis, & MacKillop, 2016;Hinson, Jameson, & Whitney, 2003;Shamosh et al, 2008;Snider, LaConte, & Bickel, 2016).…”