Abstract
Perseverative cognition (PC) is a transdiagnostic risk factor that characterizes both hypo-motivational (e.g., depression) and hyper-motivational (e.g., addiction) disorders; however, it has been almost exclusively studied within the context of the negative valence systems. The present study aimed to fill this gap by combining laboratory-based, computational and ecological assessments. Healthy individuals performed the Probabilistic Reward Task (PRT) before and after the induction of PC or a waiting period. Computational modeling was applied to dissociate the effects of PC on reward sensitivity and learning rate. Afterwards, participants underwent a one-week ecological momentary assessment of daily PC occurrence, as well as anticipatory and consummatory reward-related behavior. Induction of PC led to increased response bias on the PRT compared to waiting, likely due to an increase in learning rate but not in reward sensitivity, as suggested by computational modeling. In daily-life, PC increased the discrepancy between expected and obtained rewards (i.e., prediction error). Current converging experimental and ecological evidence suggests that PC is associated with abnormalities in the functionality of positive valence systems. Given the role of PC in the prediction, maintenance, and recurrence of psychopathology, it would be clinically valuable to extend research on this topic beyond the negative valence systems.
Highlights
A transdiagnostic approach in psychiatry promises to overcome the limits of categorial diagnostic classification systems of mental illness and to improve clinical care and treatment [1]
Perseverative cognition (PC) has been almost exclusively studied within the negative valence systems
This is somehow surprising if we consider that PC is recognized as a transdiagnostic factor, which is present across psychiatric disorders, such as substance use disorder or in the manic phase of bipolar I disorder (e.g., [14,49])
Summary
A transdiagnostic approach in psychiatry promises to overcome the limits of categorial diagnostic classification systems of mental illness and to improve clinical care and treatment [1]. The induction of rumination—as opposed to distraction— led to greater sensitivity to reward probabilities, assessed with the Probabilistic Selection Task [23], in a a group of individuals with depression and controls [24] It should be noted, that, in the study by Erdman et al [22], rumination was not experimentally manipulated, precluding any causal inference on the effects of PC on the neural responses to rewards. Given the limited generalizability of experimental settings when studying motivational processes and spontaneous phenomenon such as PC, our second goal was to investigate the ability to respond to and learn from rewards during episodes of daily-life PC To this end, using a mixed design, we first used a well-replicated induction of PC (for a review, see [25]), which was administered between two PRT assessments in a sample of healthy individuals. Based on the previously reported effects of stress induction on reward-related behavior, we hypothesized that state PC would impair reward responsiveness, as manifested in both the experimental (i.e., impaired performance on the PRT) and the ecological (i.e., reduced momentary reward anticipation and pleasantness) paradigms
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