Approach Related Deficits and Reward Based Learning in Schizophrenia

The present study examined the relationship between associative reward learning and approach related deficits (i.e., anhedonia and goal-directed behavior) in 22 individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and 25 healthy individuals (HC). Participants completed a signal detection task (Pizzagalli et al., 2005) designed to measure acquisition and retention of implicit reward contingencies. SZ and HC demonstrated similar acquisition of reward contingencies during the learning phase, reflective of intact basal ganglia driven learning. SZ with higher indices of goal-directed behavior evidenced greater improvements in learning during this phase. Both SZ and HC retained reward contingencies over a 24-hour period however, only HC flexibly adapted their behavior in the absence of continued reinforcement, which is believed to relate to orbital frontal cortex function. Results suggest that the capacity to learn from experience and to modulate behavior to receive rewards is directly related to successful pursuit of goal directed activities.