Impaired probabilistic reversal learning in youths with mood and anxiety disorders

摘要: BackgroundFrom an affective neuroscience perspective, our understanding of psychiatric illness may be advanced by neuropsychological test paradigms probing emotional processes. Reversal learning is one such process, whereby subjects must first acquire stimulus/reward and stimulus/punishment associations through trial error then reverse them. We sought to determine the specificity previously demonstrated reversal impairments in youths with bipolar disorder (BD) now comparing BD those severe mood dysregulation (SMD), major depressive (MDD), anxiety (ANX), healthy controls.MethodWe administered probabilistic response (PRR) task 165 pediatric participants aged 7–17 years (n=35), SMD ANX (n=42), MDD (n=18) normal controls (NC; n=35). Our primary analysis compared PRR performance across all five groups matched for age, sex IQ.ResultsCompared typically developing controls, was impaired youths, a trend (p=0.07).ConclusionsOur results suggest that deficits are present possibly MDD. Further work necessary elucidate neural mechanisms underlying behavioral deficits.