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Neural and behavioral markers for motivational negative symptoms of schizophrenia: a longitudinal approach

Subject Area Biological Psychiatry
Term from 2017 to 2023
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 323528193
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The multicenter, longitudinal SyMoNe study ("Neural and behavioral markers for the Motivational Negative Symptoms of schizophrenia - a longitudinal approach") focused on potential neurobehavioral markers of motivational negative symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. The project was founded by a Lead Agency proposal with the Swiss National Found as the leading organization together with Stephan Kaiser from Geneva. We focused on behavioral and functional imaging markers of reward processing previously described in patients with schizophrenia. Stable outpatients were carefully characterized on clinical, psychopathological and neurocognitive measures at baseline and after three and nine months. At baseline and after three months, we tested behavioral measures of effort-based decision making and learning from reward and punishment as well as neural activation during reward anticipation (Monetary Incentive Delay task), probabilistic reinforcement learning (Volatile Reversal-Learning task) and resting-state using functional MRI. Related to this project we found reduced ventral striatal prediction error signaling in patients with schizophrenia, which was correlated with negative symptom severity. Preliminary results of the SyMoNe study indicate the expected ventral striatal hypoactivation in patients with schizophrenia during reward anticipation, which was stable over time points, although no significant correlation with negative symptoms was observed. At the time of this report, data analyses are ongoing, and there is confidence that results of the SyMoNe study will significantly contribute to further understanding reinforcement learning alterations in patients with schizophrenia and to test specific associations with motivational negative symptoms

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