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Addiction Neuroscience Sep 2023Craving reflects the subjective urge to use drugs and can be triggered by both positive and negative emotional states. No studies have systematically investigated the...
Craving reflects the subjective urge to use drugs and can be triggered by both positive and negative emotional states. No studies have systematically investigated the relative roles of these mechanisms in the pathophysiology of substance misuse. Here, we performed meta-analyses of drug cue-elicited reactivity and win and loss processing in the monetary incentive delay task to identify distinct neural correlates of appetitive and aversive responses to drug cues. We then characterized the appetitive and aversive cue responses in seventy-six alcohol drinkers performing a cue craving task during fMRI. Imaging data were processed according to published routines. The appetitive circuit involved medial cortical regions and the ventral striatum, and the aversive circuit involved the insula, caudate and mid-cingulate cortex. We observed a significant correlation of cue-elicited activity ( estimates) of the appetitive and aversive circuit. However, individuals varied in appetitive and aversive cue responses. From the regression of appetitive (y) vs. aversive (x) , we identified participants in the top 1/3 each of those with positive and negative residuals as "approach" ( = 15) and "avoidance" ( = 11) and the others as the "mixed" ( = 50) subtype. In clinical characteristics, the avoidance subtype showed higher sensitivity to punishment and, in contrast, the approach subtype showed higher levels of sensation seeking and alcohol expectancy for social and physical pressure. The findings highlighted distinct neural underpinnings of appetitive and aversive components of cue-elicited reactivity and provided evidence for potential subtypes of alcohol drinkers.
PubMed: 37483686
DOI: 10.1016/j.addicn.2023.100089 -
Scientific Reports Aug 2023We study the intricate interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes through the lens of the prisoner's dilemma game. But while previous studies on cooperation...
We study the intricate interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes through the lens of the prisoner's dilemma game. But while previous studies on cooperation amongst selfish individuals often assume instantaneous interactions, we take into consideration delays to investigate how these might affect the causes underlying prosocial behavior. Through analytical calculations and numerical simulations, we demonstrate that delays can lead to oscillations, and by incorporating also the ecological variable of altruistic free space and the evolutionary strategy of punishment, we explore how these factors impact population and community dynamics. Depending on the parameter values and the initial fraction of each strategy, the studied eco-evolutionary model can mimic a cyclic dominance system and even exhibit chaotic behavior, thereby highlighting the importance of complex dynamics for the effective management and conservation of ecological communities. Our research thus contributes to the broader understanding of group decision-making and the emergence of moral behavior in multidimensional social systems.
Topics: Humans; Altruism; Biological Evolution; Decision Making; Lens, Crystalline; Lenses
PubMed: 37653103
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-41519-1 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Sep 2023Dopaminergic medication is well established to boost reward- versus punishment-based learning in Parkinson's disease. However, there is tremendous variability in...
Dopaminergic medication is well established to boost reward- versus punishment-based learning in Parkinson's disease. However, there is tremendous variability in dopaminergic medication effects across different individuals, with some patients exhibiting much greater cognitive sensitivity to medication than others. We aimed to unravel the mechanisms underlying this individual variability in a large heterogeneous sample of early-stage patients with Parkinson's disease as a function of comorbid neuropsychiatric symptomatology, in particular impulse control disorders and depression. One hundred and ninety-nine patients with Parkinson's disease (138 ON medication and 61 OFF medication) and 59 healthy controls were scanned with functional MRI while they performed an established probabilistic instrumental learning task. Reinforcement learning model-based analyses revealed medication group differences in learning from gains versus losses, but only in patients with impulse control disorders. Furthermore, expected-value related brain signalling in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was increased in patients with impulse control disorders ON medication compared with those OFF medication, while striatal reward prediction error signalling remained unaltered. These data substantiate the hypothesis that dopamine's effects on reinforcement learning in Parkinson's disease vary with individual differences in comorbid impulse control disorder and suggest they reflect deficient computation of value in medial frontal cortex, rather than deficient reward prediction error signalling in striatum. See Michael Browning (https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awad248) for a scientific commentary on this article.
Topics: Humans; Parkinson Disease; Dopamine; Dopamine Agents; Reinforcement, Psychology; Disruptive, Impulse Control, and Conduct Disorders
PubMed: 37192341
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awad162 -
Journal of Affective Disorders Aug 2023Affective distress (as observed in anxiety and depression) has been observed to be related to insufficient sensitivity to changing reinforcement during operant learning....
Affective distress (as observed in anxiety and depression) has been observed to be related to insufficient sensitivity to changing reinforcement during operant learning. Whether such findings are specific to anxiety or depression is unclear given a wider literature relating negative affect to abnormal learning and the possibility that relationships are not consistent across incentive types (i.e., punishment and reward) and outcomes (i.e., positive or negative). In two separate samples (n = 100; n = 88), participants completed an operant learning task with positive or negative, and neutral socio-affective feedback, designed to assess adaptive responses to changing environmental volatility. Individual parameter estimates were generated with hierarchical Bayesian modelling. Effects of manipulations were modelled by decomposing parameters into a linear combination of effects on the logit scale. While effects tended to support prior work, neither general affective distress nor anxiety or depression were consistently related to a decrease in the adaptive adjustment of learning-rates in response to changing environmental volatility (Sample 1: β = -0.01, 95 % HDI = -0.14, 0.13; Sample 2: β = -0.15, 95 % HDI = -0.37, 0.05). Interaction effects in Sample 1 suggested that while distress was associated with decrements in adaptive learning under punishment-minimisation, it was associated with improvements under reward-maximisation. While our results are broadly consistent with prior work, they suggest that the role of anxiety or depression in volatility learning, if present, is subtle and difficult to detect. Inconsistencies between our samples, along with issues of parameter identifiability complicated interpretation.
Topics: Humans; Depression; Bayes Theorem; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Reinforcement, Psychology; Reward
PubMed: 37201901
DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2023.05.021 -
IScience Mar 2024Polarization is common in politics and public opinion. It is believed to be shaped by media as well as ideologies, and often incited by misinformation. However, little...
Polarization is common in politics and public opinion. It is believed to be shaped by media as well as ideologies, and often incited by misinformation. However, little is known about the microscopic dynamics behind polarization and the resulting social tensions. By coupling opinion formation with the strategy selection in different social dilemmas, we reveal how success at an individual level transforms to global consensus or lack thereof. When defection carries with it the fear of punishment in the absence of greed, as in the stag-hunt game, opinion fragmentation is the smallest. Conversely, if defection promises a higher payoff and also evokes greed, like in the prisoner's dilemma and snowdrift game, consensus is more difficult to attain. Our research thus challenges the top-down narrative of social tensions, showing they might originate from fundamental principles at individual level, like the desire to prevail in pairwise evolutionary comparisons.
PubMed: 38444611
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109254 -
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 2023Punishment is a powerful drive that fosters aversive motivation and increases negative affect. Previous studies have reported that this drive has the propensity to...
INTRODUCTION
Punishment is a powerful drive that fosters aversive motivation and increases negative affect. Previous studies have reported that this drive has the propensity to improve cognitive control, as shown by improved conflict processing when it is used. However, whether aversive motivation or negative affect eventually drives this change remains unclear because in previous work, the specific contribution of these two components could not be isolated.
METHODS
To address this question, we conducted two experiments where we administered the confound minimized Stroop task to a large group of participants each time ( = 50 and = 47 for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively) and manipulated punishment and feedback contingency using a factorial design. These two experiments were similar except that in the second one, we also measured awareness of feedback contingency at the subjective level. We reasoned that cognitive control would improve the most when punishment would be used, and the contingency between this motivational drive and performance would be reinforced, selectively.
RESULTS
Both experiments consistently showed that negative affect increased at the subjective level when punishment was used and the feedback was contingent on task performance, with these two effects being additive. In Experiment 1, we found that when the feedback was contingent on task performance and punishment was activated, conflict processing did not improve. In Experiment 2, we found that conflict processing improved when punishment was contingent on task performance, and participants were aware of this contingency.
DISCUSSION
These results suggest that aversive motivation can improve conflict processing when participants are aware of the link created between punishment and performance.
PubMed: 37791110
DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1209824 -
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Dec 2023Evidence of alterations in emotion processing in maltreated youth has been hypothesized to reflect latent vulnerability for psychopathology. However, previous studies...
Evidence of alterations in emotion processing in maltreated youth has been hypothesized to reflect latent vulnerability for psychopathology. However, previous studies have not systematically examined the influence of psychopathology on the results. Here, we examined emotion recognition and learning in youth who differed in terms of presence vs. absence of maltreatment and psychopathology and tested for potential sex effects. Maltreatment and psychopathology were assessed in 828 youth (514 females) aged 9-18 years using diagnostic interviews and self- and parent-report questionnaires. Emotion recognition was assessed via identification of morphed facial expressions of six universal emotions. For emotion learning, reward and punishment values were assigned to novel stimuli and participants had to learn to correctly respond/withhold response to stimuli to maximize points. A three-way interaction of maltreatment by psychopathology by emotion indicated that when psychopathology was low, maltreated youth were less accurate than non-maltreated youth for happy, fear and disgust. A three-way interaction of sex, maltreatment and emotion indicated that maltreated girls and boys were impaired for fear, but girls showed an impairment for happy, while boys for disgust. There were no effects of maltreatment, psychopathology, or sex on reward learning. However, a two-way interaction between sex and maltreatment showed that maltreated girls were worse at learning from punishment relative to non-maltreated girls, while maltreated boys were better than non-maltreated boys. The study provides the first clear evidence of latent-vulnerability in emotion recognition in maltreated youth and suggests that girls and boys might be characterized by distinct profiles of emotion recognition and learning following maltreatment.
Topics: Male; Child; Female; Adolescent; Humans; Child Abuse; Emotions; Fear; Facial Expression; Psychopathology
PubMed: 36738328
DOI: 10.1007/s00787-022-02132-1 -
Women's Health Reports (New Rochelle,... 2024Colombia has a high teen pregnancy (TP) rate. In 2018, one in five pregnancies was from teen mothers between 10 and 19 years of age. While TP rates are declining...
BACKGROUND
Colombia has a high teen pregnancy (TP) rate. In 2018, one in five pregnancies was from teen mothers between 10 and 19 years of age. While TP rates are declining globally, Colombia's TP rate decline has been particularly low, despite sexual education and contraception campaigns. Other factors must be studied to prevent TP. Colombia has a long history of violence. We aim to assess whether there is a relationship between TP and exposure to violence in Colombia.
METHODS
Data from the Colombian Demographic and Health Survey 2015 and the Colombian National Department of Statistics were analyzed for association between TP and sexual violence, physical violence, physical punishment as a child, and community violence. Univariate, bivariate, multivariate, and multilevel binary logistic regression models were calculated using SPSS v.25 and HLM v.7.
RESULTS
Fifteen percent of teens were pregnant. Emotional violence was reported by 47%, sexual harassment by 27%, physical violence by 17%, physical punishment as a child by 7%, and unwanted sex by 2%. Unwanted sex (odds ratio [OR]: 3.18, 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 1.96-5.16), sexual harassment (OR: 2.43, 95% CI: 1.89-3.14), and physical punishment (OR: 20.30, 95% CI: 7.96-22.81) were associated with adolescent pregnancy. In unadjusted models, emotional violence was associated (OR: 1.22, 95% CI 1.06-1.40) and community violence showed a tendency (OR: 1.24, 95% CI: 0.99-1.55). Physical violence was not associated.
CONCLUSIONS
Violence exposure and particularly physical punishment, unwanted sex and sexual harassment were associated with TP incidence and should be considered risk factors for TP.
PubMed: 38500846
DOI: 10.1089/whr.2021.0075 -
European Journal of Psychotraumatology 2024Maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may lead to increased behavioural problems in children. However, the mediating roles of psychological distress and...
Maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may lead to increased behavioural problems in children. However, the mediating roles of psychological distress and corporal punishment, two common mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of maternal ACEs, in these relations have not been examined in Chinese samples. Multigenerational homes (MGH) are the dominate living arrangement in China; however, limited research focuses on the effects of MGHs on the intergenerational transmission of maternal ACEs. This study explored the parallel mediating effects of corporal punishment and psychological distress on the association between maternal ACEs and children's behaviour and whether MGHs can strengthen or weaken the relationship between maternal ACEs and corporal punishment or psychological distress. Participants were 643 three-year-old children and their mothers (mean age of 32.85 years, SD = 3.79) from Wuhu, China. Mothers completed online questionnaires measuring ACEs, psychological distress, corporal punishment, their family structure, and children's behavioural problems. This study used a moderated mediation model. The findings suggest that psychological distress and corporal punishment mediate the association between maternal ACEs and children's behavioural problems. The mediating role of corporal punishment was found depend on whether mothers and their children reside in MGHs. MGHs were not found to have a moderating role in the indirect relationship between maternal ACEs and children's behaviour problems via psychological distress. Our findings highlight the importance of addressing psychological distress and corporal punishment when designing interventions targeted Chinese mothers exposed to ACEs and their children, especially those living in MGHs.
Topics: Humans; Female; Adverse Childhood Experiences; Adult; China; Male; Punishment; Child, Preschool; Mothers; Surveys and Questionnaires; Intergenerational Relations; Mother-Child Relations; Psychological Distress
PubMed: 38809612
DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2024.2355757 -
PloS One 2023For the two emission reduction technologies of clean process (CT Mode) and end-of-pipe pollution control technology (ET Mode), this paper constructs production and...
For the two emission reduction technologies of clean process (CT Mode) and end-of-pipe pollution control technology (ET Mode), this paper constructs production and low-carbon R&D decision-making models considering consumers' green preference, and discusses the impact of social responsibility on firm's decision-making, profit and social welfare. Then, the difference of optimal decision, profit and social welfare is analyzed when the firm adopt two emission reduction technologies with or without reward-penalty policy. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) Whether using clean process technology or end-of-pipe pollution control technology, consumers' green preference behavior can increase corporate profit. When consumers' green preference is small, consumers' green preference is negatively correlated with social welfare. When consumers' green preference is large, consumers' green preference is positively correlated with social welfare. (2) Corporate social responsibility is conducive to improving the level of social welfare, not conducive to the increase of corporate profits. (3) When the reward and punishment intensity is small, the reward-penalty policy cannot effectively motivate the firm to assume social responsibility. Only when the reward and punishment reaches a certain level, the mechanism can have an incentive effect on the firm, and the government can actively implement the mechanism. (4) When the market scale is small, the adoption of end-of-pipe pollution control technology is more beneficial to the firm; When the market scale is large, it is beneficial for the firm to adopt clean technology. (5) If the efficiency of end-of-pipe pollution control and emission reduction is much higher than that of clean process, the firm should choose end-of-pipe pollution control technology, otherwise choose clean process.
Topics: Social Responsibility; Biological Products; Carbon; Policy; Reward
PubMed: 37432959
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285895