Psychiatric symptoms influence reward-seeking and loss-avoidance decision-making through common and distinct computational processes.

Suzuki, Shinsuke; Yamashita, Yuichi; Katahira, Kentaro

AIM Psychiatric symptoms are often accompanied by impairments in decision-making to attain rewards and avoid losses. However, due to the complex nature of mental disorders (e.g., high comorbidity), symptoms that are specifically associated with deficits in decision-making remain unidentified. Furthermore, the influence of psychiatric symptoms on computations underpinning reward-seeking and loss-avoidance decision-making remains elusive. Here, we aim to address these issues by leveraging a large-scale online experiment and computational modelling. METHODS In the online experiment, we recruited 1,900 non-diagnostic participants from the general population. They performed either a reward-seeking or loss-avoidance decision-making task, and subsequently completed questionnaires about psychiatric symptoms. RESULTS We found that one trans-diagnostic dimension of psychiatric symptoms related to compulsive behaviour and intrusive thought (CIT) was negatively correlated with overall decision-making performance in both the reward-seeking and loss-avoidance tasks. A deeper analysis further revealed that, in both tasks, the CIT psychiatric dimension was associated with lower preference for the options that recently led to better outcomes (i.e., reward or no-loss). On the other hand, in the reward-seeking task only, the CIT dimension was associated with lower preference for recently unchosen options. CONCLUSION These findings suggest that psychiatric symptoms influence the two types of decision-making, reward-seeking and loss-avoidance, through both common and distinct computational processes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.