Dissecting the impact of depression on decision-making.
Psychol Med
; 50(10): 1613-1622, 2020 07.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31280757
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Cognitive deficits in depressed adults may reflect impaired decision-making. To investigate this possibility, we analyzed data from unmedicated adults with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and healthy controls as they performed a probabilistic reward task. The Hierarchical Drift Diffusion Model (HDDM) was used to quantify decision-making mechanisms recruited by the task, to determine if any such mechanism was disrupted by depression.METHODS:
Data came from two samples (Study 1 258 MDD, 36 controls; Study 2 23 MDD, 25 controls). On each trial, participants indicated which of two similar stimuli was presented; correct identifications were rewarded. Quantile-probability plots and the HDDM quantified the impact of MDD on response times (RT), speed of evidence accumulation (drift rate), and the width of decision thresholds, among other parameters.RESULTS:
RTs were more positively skewed in depressed v. healthy adults, and the HDDM revealed that drift rates were reduced-and decision thresholds were wider-in the MDD groups. This pattern suggests that depressed adults accumulated the evidence needed to make decisions more slowly than controls did.CONCLUSIONS:
Depressed adults responded slower than controls in both studies, and poorer performance led the MDD group to receive fewer rewards than controls in Study 1. These results did not reflect a sensorimotor deficit but were instead due to sluggish evidence accumulation. Thus, slowed decision-making-not slowed perception or response execution-caused the performance deficit in MDD. If these results generalize to other tasks, they may help explain the broad cognitive deficits seen in depression.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Recompensa
/
Tomada de Decisões
/
Incerteza
/
Transtorno Depressivo Maior
Tipo de estudo:
Clinical_trials
/
Diagnostic_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
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Male
/
Middle aged
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2020
Tipo de documento:
Article