What you want may not be what you like: A test of the aberrant salience hypothesis in schizophrenia risk

• Published in: Cognitive, affective, & behavioral neuroscience Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 873 - 887
• Main Authors: Li, Lilian Yanqing, Castro, Mayan K, Martin, Elizabeth A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer Nature B.V 01.08.2020
• Subjects: Cognitive ability; Dopamine; Hypotheses; Mental disorders; Motivation; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; Pathophysiology; Psychosis; Reinforcement; Schizophrenia; Studies
• ISSN: 1530-7026; 1531-135X
• DOI: 10.3758/sl3415-020-00807-3

[...]existing studies almost exclusively relied on monetary rewards, leaving the question open of whether salience for other types of rewards (e.g., social, physical, and cognitive) are equally deficient in schizophrenia. [...]examining salience attributed to a diverse range of reward types is necessary to delineate the full spectrum of motivation dysfunction. [...]this approach is also limited because these patients could be in a highly distressing psychotic state that likely involves acute alterations of dopamine transmission (Gold, Waltz, Prentice, Morris, & Heerey, 2008; Laruelle & Abi-Dargham, 1999). Because schizophrenia risk is expressed across a continuum of conditions ranging from individual differences to subclinical and clinical disorders (Kwapil & Barrantes-Vidal, 2012, 2015; Nelson, Seal, Pantelis, & Phillips, 2013), at-risk individuals prior to the appearance of clinical manifestations thus represent prime candidates for uncovering trait-like abnormalities associated with schizophrenia. [...]prior research on at-risk individuals still has the same limitations of primarily focusing on reward versus neutral contrasts and monetary rewards, leaving unclear the precise mechanism of abnormal salience attribution across a wide range of reward types.