Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Substantia nigra/ventral tegmental reward prediction error disruption in psychosis

Substantia nigra/ventral tegmental reward prediction error disruption in psychosis While dopamine systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and psychosis for many years, how dopamine dysfunction generates psychotic symptoms remains unknown. Recent theoretical interest has been directed at relating the known role of midbrain dopamine neurons in reinforcement learning, motivational salience and prediction error to explain the abnormal mental experience of psychosis. However, this theoretical model has yet to be explored empirically. To examine a link between psychotic experience, reward learning and dysfunction of the dopaminergic midbrain and associated target regions, we asked a group of first episode psychosis patients suffering from active positive symptoms and a group of healthy control participants to perform an instrumental reward conditioning experiment. We characterized neural responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We observed that patients with psychosis exhibit abnormal physiological responses associated with reward prediction error in the dopaminergic midbrain, striatum and limbic system, and we demonstrated subtle abnormalities in the ability of psychosis patients to discriminate between motivationally salient and neutral stimuli. This study provides the first evidence linking abnormal mesolimbic activity, reward learning and psychosis. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Molecular Psychiatry Springer Journals

Substantia nigra/ventral tegmental reward prediction error disruption in psychosis

Download PDF
10 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/substantia-nigra-ventral-tegmental-reward-prediction-error-disruption-tdVR4EofCG

References (53)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Nature Publishing Group
Subject
Medicine & Public Health; Medicine/Public Health, general; Psychiatry; Neurosciences; Behavioral Sciences; Pharmacotherapy; Biological Psychology
ISSN
1359-4184
eISSN
1476-5578
DOI
10.1038/sj.mp.4002058
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

While dopamine systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and psychosis for many years, how dopamine dysfunction generates psychotic symptoms remains unknown. Recent theoretical interest has been directed at relating the known role of midbrain dopamine neurons in reinforcement learning, motivational salience and prediction error to explain the abnormal mental experience of psychosis. However, this theoretical model has yet to be explored empirically. To examine a link between psychotic experience, reward learning and dysfunction of the dopaminergic midbrain and associated target regions, we asked a group of first episode psychosis patients suffering from active positive symptoms and a group of healthy control participants to perform an instrumental reward conditioning experiment. We characterized neural responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We observed that patients with psychosis exhibit abnormal physiological responses associated with reward prediction error in the dopaminergic midbrain, striatum and limbic system, and we demonstrated subtle abnormalities in the ability of psychosis patients to discriminate between motivationally salient and neutral stimuli. This study provides the first evidence linking abnormal mesolimbic activity, reward learning and psychosis.

Journal

Molecular Psychiatry – Springer Journals

Published: Aug 7, 2007

There are no references for this article.