title: Neural signal during immediate reward anticipation in schizophrenia: Relationship to real-world motivation and function.
abstract: Amotivation in schizophrenia is a central predictor of poor functioning, and is thought to occur due to deficits in anticipating future rewards, suggesting that impairments in anticipating pleasure can contribute to functional disability in schizophrenia. In healthy comparison (HC) participants, reward anticipation is associated with activity in frontal-striatal networks. By contrast, schizophrenia (SZ) participants show hypoactivation within these frontal-striatal networks during this motivated anticipatory brain state. Here, we examined neural activation in SZ and HC participants during the anticipatory phase of stimuli that predicted immediate upcoming reward and punishment, and during the feedback/outcome phase, in relation to trait measures of hedonic pleasure and real-world functional capacity. SZ patients showed hypoactivation in ventral striatum during reward anticipation. Additionally, we found distinct differences between HC and SZ groups in their association between reward-related immediate anticipatory neural activity and their reported experience of pleasure. HC participants recruited reward-related regions in striatum that significantly correlated with subjective consummatory pleasure, while SZ patients revealed activation in attention-related regions, such as the IPL, which correlated with consummatory pleasure and functional capacity. These findings may suggest that SZ patients activate compensatory attention processes during anticipation of immediate upcoming rewards, which likely contribute to their functional capacity in daily life.
authors.affiliation: San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.
authors.forename: Karuna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Subramaniam
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Christine I
authors.initials: CI
authors.lastname: Hooker
authors.affiliation: San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Biagianti
authors.affiliation: San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94123, USA.
authors.forename: Srikantan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nagarajan
authors.affiliation: San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.
authors.forename: Sophia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vinogradov
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D057181:Pleasure; D011678:Punishment; D012201:Reward; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology
keywords: Motivation; Punishment; Reward; Schizophrenia; fMRI