Adaptive suppression of motivational biases increases with mood/anxiety traits.
Source: PubMed, NCBI / U.S. National Library of Medicine
Changes in motivational biases appear central to many psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Motivational biases, theorized to embody default response strategies helpful in uncertain or novel situations, invigorate responding when promised rewards and hold us back facing punishment. However, it remains unclear how specific changes in biases are to certain disorders. Here, we relate motivational biases to continuous, dimensional measures of psychiatric symptoms focusing on depression and anxiety (AD) and compulsions and intrusive thoughts (CIT). We recruited 500 participants online from the general population, who performed a motivational Go/NoGo task, a global measure of cognitive ability (I-CAR), and clinical questionnaires. We used factor analysis, mixed-effects models and computational modelling to link transdiagnostic symptom dimensions to motivational biases. Higher AD symptoms predicted better performance on trials where action requirements are not aligned with motivational biases, requiring their suppression. In contrast, higher CIT scores were associated with overall worse performance, likely reflecting a more general performance deficit. Higher AD symptoms were linked to a more frequent expression of a novel computational model capturing the trial-by-trial up-and-downregulation of the impact of motivational biases. The opposite was found for the CIT dimension. The dissociable patterns for AD and CIT suggest dimension-specific altera
Abstract
Changes in motivational biases appear central to many psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Motivational biases, theorized to embody default response strategies helpful in uncertain or novel situations, invigorate responding when promised rewards and hold us back facing punishment. However, it remains unclear how specific changes in biases are to certain disorders. Here, we relate motivational biases to continuous, dimensional measures of psychiatric symptoms focusing on depression and anxiety (AD) and compulsions and intrusive thoughts (CIT). We recruited 500 participants online from the general population, who performed a motivational Go/NoGo task, a global measure of cognitive ability (I-CAR), and clinical questionnaires. We used factor analysis, mixed-effects models and computational modelling to link transdiagnostic symptom dimensions to motivational biases. Higher AD symptoms predicted better performance on trials where action requirements are not aligned with motivational biases, requiring their suppression. In contrast, higher CIT scores were associated with overall worse performance, likely reflecting a more general performance deficit. Higher AD symptoms were linked to a more frequent expression of a novel computational model capturing the trial-by-trial up-and-downregulation of the impact of motivational biases. The opposite was found for the CIT dimension. The dissociable patterns for AD and CIT suggest dimension-specific alterations in motivational bias rather than reflecting a generalized psychopathology factor. We speculate that AD individuals, when required to exert effort, might recruit excessive cognitive effort for suppressing motivational biases. This more 'controlled' mode of decision-making might improve performance, yet also exhaust participants and contribute to symptoms.