Abstract
Punishment involves learning about the relationship between behavior and its adverse consequences. Punishment is fundamental to reinforcement learning, decision-making and choice, and is disrupted in psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression, and psychopathy. However, little is known about the brain mechanisms of punishment and much of what is known is derived from study of superficially similar, but fundamentally distinct, forms of aversive learning such as fear conditioning and avoidance learning. Here we outline the unique conditions that support punishment, the contents of its learning, and its behavioral consequences. We consider evidence implicating GABA and monoamine neurotransmitter systems, as well as corticostriatal, amygdala, and dopamine circuits in punishment. We show how maladaptive punishment processes are implicated in addictions, impulse control disorders, psychopathy, anxiety, and depression and argue that a better understanding of the cellular, circuit, and cognitive mechanisms of punishment will make important contributions to next generation therapeutic approaches.
Highlights
Punishment involves learning about the relationship between behavior and its adverse consequences
Punishment serves as a tool for assessing the influences of risk on decision-making and as a tool for identifying the brain mechanisms of value and choice
We review some of the brain bases of punishment and psychiatric disorders with perturbations in punishment processing
Summary
Behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of punishment: implications for psychiatric disorders. It refers to the suppressive effects of undesirable outcomes on the behaviors that cause them (Table 1). Presentations of a fear CS contingent upon lever-pressing will instrumentally suppress lever-pressing (a procedure known as secondary or conditioned punishment) In these examples, behavior is modified because it causes an adverse event to occur, so these are examples of positive punishment. A reduction or removal of reward, or a stimulus that signals such reductions (e.g., monetary loss, absence of a palatable food), can serve as a punisher when made contingent on a behavior These kinds of events are frequently used in human neuroimaging or primate single unit recording experiments.
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