Do adolescents use choice to learn about their preferences? Development of value refinement and its associations with depressive symptoms in adolescence.

Independent decision making requires forming stable estimates of one's preferences. We assessed whether adolescents learn about their preferences through choice deliberation and whether depressive symptoms disrupt this process. Adolescents aged 11-18 (N = 214; participated 2021-22; Female: 53.9%; White/Black/Asian/Mixed/Arab or Latin American: 26/21/19/9/8%) rated multiple activities, chose between pairs of activities and re-rated those activities. As expected, overall, participants uprated chosen and downrated unchosen activities (dz = .20). This value refinement through choice was not evident in younger participants but emerged across adolescence. Contrary to our predictions, depressive symptoms were associated with greater value refinement. Despite this, more depressed adolescents reported lower value certainty and choice confidence. The cognitive processes through which choice deliberation shapes preference develop over adolescence, and are disrupted in depression.

Correction: Altered activation and connectivity in a hippocampal-basal ganglia-midbrain circuit during salience processing in subjects at ultra high risk for psychosis.

This Article was originally published under Nature Research's License to Publish, but has now been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license. The PDF and HTML versions of the Article have been modified accordingly.

Depression is associated with enhanced aversive Pavlovian control over instrumental behaviour.

The dynamic modulation of instrumental behaviour by conditioned Pavlovian cues is an important process in decision-making. Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) are known to exhibit mood-congruent biases in information processing, which may occur due to Pavlovian influences, but this hypothesis has never been tested directly in an unmedicated sample. To address this we tested unmedicated MDD patients and healthy volunteers on a computerized Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) task designed to separately examine instrumental approach and withdrawal actions in the context of Pavlovian appetitive and aversive cues. This design allowed us to directly measure the degree to which Pavlovian cues influence instrumental responding. Depressed patients were profoundly influenced by aversive Pavlovian stimuli, to a significantly greater degree than healthy volunteers. This was the case for instrumental behaviour both in the approach condition (in which aversive Pavlovian cues inhibited 'go' responses), and in the withdrawal condition (in which aversive Pavlovian cues facilitated 'go' responses). Exaggerated aversive PIT provides a potential cognitive mechanism for biased emotion processing in major depression. This finding also has wider significance for the understanding of disrupted motivational processing in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Altered activation and connectivity in a hippocampal-basal ganglia-midbrain circuit during salience processing in subjects at ultra high risk for psychosis.

Animal models of psychosis propose that abnormal hippocampal activity drives increased subcortical dopamine function, which is thought to contribute to aberrant salience processing and psychotic symptoms. These effects appear to be mediated through connections between the hippocampus, ventral striatum/pallidum and the midbrain. The aim of the present study was to examine the activity and connectivity in this pathway in people at ultra high risk (UHR) for psychosis. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare neural responses in a hippocampal-basal ganglia-midbrain network during reward, novelty and aversion processing between 29 UHR subjects and 32 healthy controls. We then investigated whether effective connectivity within this network is perturbed in UHR subjects, using dynamic causal modelling (DCM). Finally, we examined the relationship between alterations in activation and connectivity in the UHR subjects and the severity of their psychotic symptoms. During reward anticipation, UHR subjects showed greater activation than controls in the ventral pallidum bilaterally. There were no differences in activation during novelty or aversion processing. DCM revealed that reward-induced modulation of connectivity from the ventral striatum/pallidum to the midbrain was greater in UHR subjects than controls, and that in UHR subjects, the strength of connectivity in this pathway was correlated with the severity of their abnormal beliefs. In conclusion, ventral striatal/pallidal function is altered in people at UHR for psychosis and this is related to the level of their psychotic symptoms.

Unreliability of putative fMRI biomarkers during emotional face processing.

There is considerable need to develop tailored approaches to psychiatric treatment. Numerous researchers have proposed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) biomarkers to predict therapeutic response, in particular by measuring task-evoked subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC) and amygdala activation in mood and anxiety disorders. Translating this to the clinic relies on the assumption that blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) responses in these regions are stable within individuals. To test this assumption, we scanned a group of 29 volunteers twice (mean test-retest interval=14.3 days) and calculated the within-subject reliability of the amplitude of the amygdalae and sgACC BOLD responses to emotional faces using three paradigms: emotion identification; emotion matching; and gender classification. We also calculated the reliability of activation in a control region, the right fusiform face area (FFA). All three tasks elicited robust group activations in the amygdalae and sgACC (which changed little on average over scanning sessions), but within-subject reliability was surprisingly low, despite excellent reliability in the control right FFA region. Our findings demonstrate low statistical reliability of two important putative treatment biomarkers in mood and anxiety disorders.

Longitudinal alterations in motivational salience processing in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis.

BACKGROUND: Impairments in the attribution of salience are thought to be fundamental to the development of psychotic symptoms and the onset of psychotic disorders. The aim of the present study was to explore longitudinal alterations in salience processing in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis. METHOD: A total of 23 ultra-high-risk subjects and 13 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at two time points (mean interval of 17 months) while performing the Salience Attribution Test to assess neural responses to task-relevant (adaptive salience) and task-irrelevant (aberrant salience) stimulus features. RESULTS: At presentation, high-risk subjects were less likely than controls to attribute salience to relevant features, and more likely to attribute salience to irrelevant stimulus features. These behavioural differences were no longer evident at follow-up. When attributing salience to relevant cue features, ultra-high-risk subjects showed less activation than controls in the ventral striatum at both baseline and follow-up. Within the high-risk sample, amelioration of abnormal beliefs over the follow-up period was correlated with an increase in right ventral striatum activation during the attribution of salience to relevant cue features. CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirm that salience processing is perturbed in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis, that this is linked to alterations in ventral striatum function, and that clinical outcomes are related to longitudinal changes in ventral striatum function during salience processing.

Disrupted habenula function in major depression.

The habenula is a small, evolutionarily conserved brain structure that plays a central role in aversive processing and is hypothesised to be hyperactive in depression, contributing to the generation of symptoms such as anhedonia. However, habenula responses during aversive processing have yet to be reported in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Unmedicated and currently depressed MDD patients (N=25, aged 18-52 years) and healthy volunteers (N=25, aged 19-52 years) completed a passive (Pavlovian) conditioning task with appetitive (monetary gain) and aversive (monetary loss and electric shock) outcomes during high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging; data were analysed using computational modelling. Arterial spin labelling was used to index resting-state perfusion and high-resolution anatomical images were used to assess habenula volume. In healthy volunteers, habenula activation increased as conditioned stimuli (CSs) became more strongly associated with electric shocks. This pattern was significantly different in MDD subjects, for whom habenula activation decreased significantly with increasing association between CSs and electric shocks. Individual differences in habenula volume were negatively associated with symptoms of anhedonia across both groups. MDD subjects exhibited abnormal negative task-related (phasic) habenula responses during primary aversive conditioning. The direction of this effect is opposite to that predicted by contemporary theoretical accounts of depression based on findings in animal models. We speculate that the negative habenula responses we observed may result in the loss of the capacity to actively avoid negative cues in MDD, which could lead to excessive negative focus.

Membrane lipidomics in schizophrenia patients: a correlational study with clinical and cognitive manifestations.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental condition in which several lipid abnormalities-either structural or metabolic-have been described. We tested the hypothesis that an abnormality in membrane lipid composition may contribute to aberrant dopamine signaling, and thereby symptoms and cognitive impairment, in schizophrenia (SCZ) patients. Antipsychotic-medicated and clinically stable SCZ outpatients (n=74) were compared with matched healthy subjects (HC, n=40). A lipidomic analysis was performed in red blood cell (RBC) membranes examining the major phospholipid (PL) classes and their associated fatty acids (FAs). Clinical manifestations were examined using the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS). Cognitive function was assessed using the Continuous Performance Test, Salience Attribution Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Sphingomyelin (SM) percentage was the lipid abnormality most robustly associated with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Two groups of patients were defined. The first group (SCZ c/SM-) is characterized by a low SM membrane content. In this group, all other PL classes, plasmalogen and key polyunsaturated FAs known to be involved in brain function, were significantly modified, identifying a very specific membrane lipid cluster. The second patient group (SCZ c/SM+) was similar to HCs in terms of RBC membrane SM composition. Compared with SCZ c/SM+, SCZ c/SM- patients were characterized by significantly more severe PANSS total, positive, disorganized/cognitive and excited psychopathology. Cognitive performance was also significantly poorer in this subgroup. These data show that a specific RBC membrane lipid cluster is associated with clinical and cognitive manifestations of dopamine dysfunction in schizophrenia patients. We speculate that this membrane lipid abnormality influences presynaptic dopamine signaling.

Affective Biases in Humans and Animals.

Depression is one of the most common but poorly understood psychiatric conditions. Although drug treatments and psychological therapies are effective in some patients, many do not achieve full remission and some patients receive no apparent benefit. Developing new improved treatments requires a better understanding of the aetiology of symptoms and evaluation of novel therapeutic targets in pre-clinical studies. Recent developments in our understanding of the basic cognitive processes that may contribute to the development of depression and its treatment offer new opportunities for both clinical and pre-clinical research. This chapter discusses the clinical evidence supporting a cognitive neuropsychological model of depression and antidepressant efficacy, and how this information may be usefully translated to pre-clinical investigation. Studies using neuropsychological tests in depressed patients and at risk populations have revealed basic negative emotional biases and disrupted reward and punishment processing, which may also impact on non-affective cognition. These affective biases are sensitive to antidepressant treatments with early onset effects observed, suggesting an important role in recovery. This clinical work into affective biases has also facilitated back-translation to animals and the development of assays to study affective biases in rodents. These animal studies suggest that, similar to humans, rodents in putative negative affective states exhibit negative affective biases on decision-making and memory tasks. Antidepressant treatments also induce positive biases in these rodent tasks, supporting the translational validity of this approach. Although still in the early stages of development and validation, affective biases in depression have the potential to offer new insights into the clinical condition, as well as facilitating the development of more translational approaches for pre-clinical studies.

Salience attribution and its relationship to cannabis-induced psychotic symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis is a widely used drug associated with increased risk for psychosis. The dopamine hypothesis of psychosis postulates that altered salience processing leads to psychosis. We therefore tested the hypothesis that cannabis users exhibit aberrant salience and explored the relationship between aberrant salience and dopamine synthesis capacity. METHOD: We tested 17 cannabis users and 17 age- and sex-matched non-user controls using the Salience Attribution Test, a probabilistic reward-learning task. Within users, cannabis-induced psychotic symptoms were measured with the Psychotomimetic States Inventory. Dopamine synthesis capacity, indexed as the influx rate constant K i cer , was measured in 10 users and six controls with 3,4-dihydroxy-6-[18F]fluoro-l-phenylalanine positron emission tomography. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in aberrant salience between the groups [F 1,32 = 1.12, p = 0.30 (implicit); F 1,32 = 1.09, p = 0.30 (explicit)]. Within users there was a significant positive relationship between cannabis-induced psychotic symptom severity and explicit aberrant salience scores (r = 0.61, p = 0.04) and there was a significant association between cannabis dependency/abuse status and high implicit aberrant salience scores (F 1,15 = 5.8, p = 0.03). Within controls, implicit aberrant salience was inversely correlated with whole striatal dopamine synthesis capacity (r = -0.91, p = 0.01), whereas this relationship was non-significant within users (difference between correlations: Z = -2.05, p = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS: Aberrant salience is positively associated with cannabis-induced psychotic symptom severity, but is not seen in cannabis users overall. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the link between cannabis use and psychosis involves alterations in salience processing. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether these cognitive abnormalities are pre-existing or caused by long-term cannabis use.

Affective Biases in Humans and Animals.

Depression is one of the most common but poorly understood psychiatric conditions. Although drug treatments and psychological therapies are effective in some patients, many do not achieve full remission and some patients receive no apparent benefit. Developing new improved treatments requires a better understanding of the aetiology of symptoms and evaluation of novel therapeutic targets in pre-clinical studies. Recent developments in our understanding of the basic cognitive processes that may contribute to the development of depression and its treatment offer new opportunities for both clinical and pre-clinical research. This chapter discusses the clinical evidence supporting a cognitive neuropsychological model of depression and antidepressant efficacy, and how this information may be usefully translated to pre-clinical investigation. Studies using neuropsychological tests in depressed patients and at risk populations have revealed basic negative emotional biases and disrupted reward and punishment processing, which may also impact on non-affective cognition. These affective biases are sensitive to antidepressant treatments with early onset effects observed, suggesting an important role in recovery. This clinical work into affective biases has also facilitated back-translation to animals and the development of assays to study affective biases in rodents. These animal studies suggest that, similar to humans, rodents in putative negative affective states exhibit negative affective biases on decision-making and memory tasks. Antidepressant treatments also induce positive biases in these rodent tasks, supporting the translational validity of this approach. Although still in the early stages of development and validation, affective biases in depression have the potential to offer new insights into the clinical condition, as well as facilitating the development of more translational approaches for pre-clinical studies.

Are IQ and educational outcomes in teenagers related to their cannabis use? A prospective cohort study.

There is much debate about the impact of adolescent cannabis use on intellectual and educational outcomes. We investigated associations between adolescent cannabis use and IQ and educational attainment in a sample of 2235 teenagers from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. By the age of 15, 24% reported having tried cannabis at least once. A series of nested linear regressions was employed, adjusted hierarchically by pre-exposure ability and potential confounds (e.g. cigarette and alcohol use, childhood mental-health symptoms and behavioural problems), to test the relationships between cumulative cannabis use and IQ at the age of 15 and educational performance at the age of 16. After full adjustment, those who had used cannabis ⩾ 50 times did not differ from never-users on either IQ or educational performance. Adjusting for group differences in cigarette smoking dramatically attenuated the associations between cannabis use and both outcomes, and further analyses demonstrated robust associations between cigarette use and educational outcomes, even with cannabis users excluded. These findings suggest that adolescent cannabis use is not associated with IQ or educational performance once adjustment is made for potential confounds, in particular adolescent cigarette use. Modest cannabis use in teenagers may have less cognitive impact than epidemiological surveys of older cohorts have previously suggested.

Anti-anhedonic effect of ketamine and its neural correlates in treatment-resistant bipolar depression.

Anhedonia--which is defined as diminished pleasure from, or interest in, previously rewarding activities-is one of two cardinal symptoms of a major depressive episode. However, evidence suggests that standard treatments for depression do little to alleviate the symptoms of anhedonia and may cause reward blunting. Indeed, no therapeutics are currently approved for the treatment of anhedonia. Notably, over half of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder experience significant levels of anhedonia during a depressive episode. Recent research into novel and rapid-acting therapeutics for depression, particularly the noncompetitive N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist ketamine, has highlighted the role of the glutamatergic system in the treatment of depression; however, it is unknown whether ketamine specifically improves anhedonic symptoms. The present study used a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover design to examine whether a single ketamine infusion could reduce anhedonia levels in 36 patients with treatment-resistant bipolar depression. The study also used positron emission tomography imaging in a subset of patients to explore the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning ketamine's anti-anhedonic effects. We found that ketamine rapidly reduced the levels of anhedonia. Furthermore, this reduction occurred independently from reductions in general depressive symptoms. Anti-anhedonic effects were specifically related to increased glucose metabolism in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and putamen. Our study emphasizes the importance of the glutamatergic system in treatment-refractory bipolar depression, particularly in the treatment of symptoms such as anhedonia.

Cognitive impairment in depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: This review aimed to address the question of whether cognitive impairment should be considered a core feature of depression that may be a valuable target for treatment. METHOD: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of cognitive function, assessed with a single neuropsychological test battery, the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), in patients with depression during symptomatic and remitted states. Inclusion of studies comparing patients remitted from depression and controls enabled us to investigate whether cognitive impairment persists beyond episodes of low mood in depression. RESULTS: Our meta-analysis revealed significant moderate cognitive deficits in executive function, memory and attention in patients with depression relative to controls (Cohen's d effect sizes ranging from -0.34 to -0.65). Significant moderate deficits in executive function and attention (Cohen's d ranging from -0.52 to -0.61) and non-significant small/moderate deficits in memory (Cohen's d ranging from -0.22 to -0.54) were found to persist in patients whose depressive symptoms had remitted, indicating that cognitive impairment occurs separately from episodes of low mood in depression. CONCLUSIONS: Both low mood and cognitive impairment are associated with poor psychosocial functioning. Therefore, we argue that remediation of cognitive impairment and alleviation of depressive symptoms each play an important role in improving outcome for patients with depression. In conclusion, this systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrates that cognitive impairment represents a core feature of depression that cannot be considered an epiphenomenon that is entirely secondary to symptoms of low mood and that may be a valuable target for future interventions.

Measuring endogenous changes in serotonergic neurotransmission in humans: a [11C]CUMI-101 PET challenge study.

Serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmission is implicated in cognitive and emotional processes and a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. The use of positron emission tomography (PET) to measure ligand displacement has allowed estimation of endogenous dopamine release in the human brain; however, applying this methodology to assess central 5-HT release has proved more challenging. The aim of this study was to assess the sensitivity of a highly selective 5-HT(1A) partial agonist radioligand [(11)C]CUMI-101 to changes in endogenous 5-HT levels induced by an intravenous challenge with the selective 5-HT re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI), citalopram, in healthy human participants. We studied 15 healthy participants who underwent PET scanning in conjunction with [(11)C]CUMI-101 after receiving an intravenous infusion of citalopram 10 mg or placebo in a double-blind, crossover, randomized design. Regional estimates of binding potential (BP(ND)) were obtained by calculating total volumes of distribution (V(T)) for presynaptic dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) and postsynaptic cortical regions. Relative to placebo, citalopram infusion significantly increased [(11)C]CUMI-101 BP(ND) at postsynaptic 5-HT(1A) receptors in several cortical regions, but there was no change in binding at 5-HT(1A) autoreceptors in the DRN. Across the postsynaptic brain regions, citalopram treatment induced a mean 7% in [(11)C]CUMI-101 BP(ND) (placebo 1.3 (0.2); citalopram 1.4 (0.2); paired t-test P=0.003). The observed increase in postsynaptic [(11)C]CUMI-101 availability identified following acute citalopram administration could be attributable to a decrease in endogenous 5-HT availability in cortical terminal regions, consistent with preclinical animal studies, in which acute administration of SSRIs decreases DRN cell firing through activation of 5-HT(1A) autoreceptors to reduce 5-HT levels in postsynaptic regions. We conclude that [(11)C]CUMI-101 may be sensitive to changes in endogenous 5-HT release in humans.

Dopamine, serotonin and impulsivity.

Impulsive people have a strong urge to act without thinking. It is sometimes regarded as a positive trait but rash impulsiveness is also widely present in clinical disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), drug dependence, mania, and antisocial behaviour. Contemporary research has begun to make major inroads into unravelling the brain mechanisms underlying impulsive behaviour with a prominent focus on the limbic cortico-striatal systems. With this progress has come the understanding that impulsivity is a multi-faceted behavioural trait involving neurally and psychologically diverse elements. We discuss the significance of this heterogeneity for clinical disorders expressing impulsive behaviour and the pivotal contribution made by the brain dopamine and serotonin systems in the aetiology and treatment of behavioural syndromes expressing impulsive symptoms.