Blunted neuroeconomic loss aversion in schizophrenia

James Currie, Gordon D Waiter, Blair Johnston, Nick Feltovich, J Douglas Steele

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Abnormal social decision-making is prominent in schizophrenia. Antipsychotic medication often improves interpersonal functioning but this action is poorly understood. Neuroeconomic paradigms are an effective method of investigating social decision-making in psychiatric disorders that can be adapted for use with neuroimaging. Using a neuroeconomic approach, it has been shown that healthy humans reproducibly alter their behavior in different contexts, including exhibiting loss aversion: a higher sensitivity to loss outcomes compared to gains of the same magnitude.

METHODS: Here, using a novel loss aversion task and fMRI, we tested three hypotheses: controls exhibiting normal behavioral loss aversion show changes in brain activity consistent with previous studies on healthy subjects; behavioral loss aversion is significantly reduced in schizophrenia and associated with abnormal activity in the same brain regions activated in controls during loss aversion behavior; and for the patient group alone, there is a significant correlation between increased psychotic symptoms, blunted loss aversion and abnormal brain activity. These hypotheses were tested in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls using a loss aversion paradigm and fMRI.

RESULTS: The results support the hypotheses, with patients exhibiting significantly blunted behavioral loss aversion compared to controls. Controls showed a robust loss aversion brain activation pattern in the medial temporal lobe, insula and dopaminergic-linked areas, which was blunted in schizophrenia.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results are consistent with blunted loss aversion being a reproducible feature of schizophrenia, likely due to abnormal dopaminergic and medial temporal lobe function, suggesting a route by which antipsychotics could influence interpersonal behavior.

Original languageEnglish
Article number147957
Number of pages8
JournalBrain Research
Volume1789
Early online date30 May 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
We thank all participants for their time and effort in taking part in this study and radiographers for their invaluable work in the MRI procedures. This study was supported by funding from the Millar-McKenzie Trust and the BMA Margaret Temple grant.

Keywords

  • Antipsychotic Agents/pharmacology
  • Brain
  • Brain Mapping
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Neuroimaging
  • Schizophrenia/diagnosis

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