Social cognitive deficits are a hallmark of schizophrenia and include impaired social cue perception, mentalizing, and emotion regulation. Social cognitive deficits are related to functional disability and poor outcome. However, little is known about social reward learning in schizophrenia. Failure to learn to social feedback may critically impair learning of appropriate social interactions, and thus could be a significant contributor to functional impairment in schizophrenia, and thus a possible novel target of intervention that may advance treatment of this debilitating aspect of the illness. The overall objective of this application is to address the gap in the literature regarding social reward learning in schizophrenia. The time is ripe to assess these deficits in schizophrenia because basic neuroscience research over the last decade has identified neural processes involved in social reward. For instance, key cortical-basal ganglia circuitry involved in non-social reward learning also appears to be involved in social reward. Monetary reward learning has been extensively studied in schizophrenia and may inform hypotheses about social reward learning since the same key brain areas are involved in both types of reward. A number of studies, though not all, show impaired learning to positive feedback, but relatively intact learning to negative monetary feedback in schizophrenia. The proposed social reward learning studies may provide similar evidence of impaired learning to positive, but more intact learning to negative, feedback which could contribute significantly to decreased social motivation and social pleasure. It is also critical to determine whether decreased expected value, which involves structures such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and/or reward prediction error (RPE) learning, which involves structures such as the striatum, underlie social reward learning deficits so as to inform potential treatment pathways. Impaired monetary reward learning in schizophrenia is driven in part by decreased value of rewards as seen in computational modeling and in decreased activation of vmPFC. Decreased striatal activation to RPEs is also seen in some, but not all, studies and like behavioral results is observed with positive, but not negative RPEs. Our central hypothesis is that the pattern of social learning deficits is an extension of more general reward learning impairment in schizophrenia and that social reward learning deficits critically contribute to deficits in social motivation and pleasure. There may also be addition impairments in schizophrenia more specific to social reward learning, such as impaired activation of areas involved in social cognition (e.g., amydala). A probabilistic reward learning (PRL) task will be used to evaluate social reward learning from negative and positive social feedback. Monetary reward learning will be used as a comparison to assess specificity.
The specific aims are to: 1) Assess whether people with schizophrenia show impaired learning from social rewards; 2) Evaluate neural circuitry involved in social reward learning in schizophrenia; and 3) Assess relationships between social reward learning and clinical symptoms and function in schizophrenia.
Social cognitive deficits are a hallmark of schizophrenia and are related to functional disability and poor outcome. The goal of this grant proposal is to assess social reward learning deficits in schizophrenia, about which little is known. Failure to learn from social feedback could critically impair learning of appropriate social interactions, and thus could be a significant contributor to functional impairment in schizophrenia, and a possible novel target of intervention that may advance treatment of this debilitating aspect of the illness.
