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.

Keywords: Motivation; Punishment; Reward; Schizophrenia; fMRI.

Fig. 1

Illustration of one MID trial.

Fig. 2

Behavior: Mean accuracy in HC and SZ participants. A. One-way ANOVA reveals a significant group difference in overall accuracy.B. One-way ANOVAs reveal a significant group difference in the No Lose condition as well as in the Win condition.

Fig. 3

Conjunction analyses: immediate Reward anticipation versus Null. Whole-brain activation images reveal that HC and SZ participants recruit the same network. The yellow voxels illustrate regions showing activation overlap in the two groups.

Fig. 4

ROI analyses during immediate reward anticipation: correlations with trait hedonic pleasure. HC = black circles, red correlation values; SZ = white circles, blue correlation values.

Fig. 5

Conjunction analyses: Reward gain versus no monetary gain. Bilateral putamen and L. IPL regions show activation overlap in the two groups.

Fig. 6

Conjunction analyses: immediate punishment anticipation versus Null. Only one region, left occipital cortex, shows activation overlap in the two groups.

Fig. 7

Conjunction analyses: punishment Loss versus no monetary Loss. Only one region, medial superior frontal gyrus, shows activation overlap in the two groups.