title: Effort-Based Decision Making in Schizophrenia: Evaluation of Paradigms to Measure Motivational Deficits.
abstract: Effort-based decision making requires one to decide how much effort to expend for a certain amount of reward. As the amount of reward goes up most people are willing to exert more effort. This relationship between reward level and effort expenditure can be measured in specialized performance-based tasks that have only recently been applied to schizophrenia. Such tasks provide a way to measure objectively motivational deficits in schizophrenia, which now are only assessed with clinical interviews of negative symptoms. The articles in this theme provide reviews of the relevant animal and human literatures (first 2 articles), and then a psychometric evaluation of 5 effort-based decision making paradigms (last 2 articles). This theme section is intended to stimulate interest in this emerging area among basic scientists developing paradigms for preclinical studies, human experimentalists trying to disentangle factors that contribute to performance on effort-based tasks, and investigators looking for objective endpoints for clinical trials of negative symptoms in schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; Department of Veterans Affairs, Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA mgreen@ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Michael F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; Department of Veterans Affairs, Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles, CA.
authors.forename: William P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Horan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: effort-based decision making; motivation; negative symptoms