CBBS Best Paper of The Year 2023

CBBS directors, together with the Rector of the OVGU, present the certificates and cheques to the award winners; Prof. Dr. med. Emrah Düzel, Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Remy, Prof. Dr. Markus Ullsperger, Dr. Hans Kirschner, Stephanie Seidenbecher, Prof. Dr. Dr. Anne Albrecht, Prof. Dr. Daniela Dieterich, Prof. Dr. Tömme Noesselt und Rektor Prof. Dr. Jens Strakeljan from left to right. Fotos: Ritter/LIN

Transdiagnostic inflexible learning dynamics explain deficits in depression and schizophrenia

Cognitive impairments such as attentional deficits, executive dysfunctions, or learning difficulties are at the core of many mental disorders and significantly affect the quality of life and the risk of relapse for those affected. In this article in the scientific journal Brain, we characterize transdiagnostic and disorder-specific reinforcement learning deficits in depression and schizophrenia. Using a computational framework, we show that compared to healthy controls, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or depression showed reduced dynamic adaptation in learning rendering their choices more susceptible to misleading feedback. Simultaneously recorded EEG activity revealed that both patient groups showed reduced neural representation of reward expectation. Moreover, we identified disorder-specific learning deficits, such as hypersensitivity to negative information in depression. Our findings highlight the benefits of combining a comprehensive and well-validated computational framework with neural measures to reveal novel insights of complex pathophysiological processes.