Anxiety, Depression, and Decision Making: A Computational Perspective

Bishop, Sonia J.; Gagné, Christopher

doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-080317-062007

Cited by 182 publications

(201 citation statements)

References 94 publications

(109 reference statements)

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“…Despite our relatively powerful approach that simultaneously assessed learning and post-learning performance, as well as reward and punishment learning in the context of a within-subject anxiety induction, and contrary to some previous studies, our experiments failed to reveal clear and specific effects of anxiety on learning per se. While surprising at first glance, our null results agree with findings from a small-scale review that shows little to no effects of anxiety on learning and post-learning performance on average and they add to recent results, which have started to challenge the role of anxiety in experience-based decision-making (Bishop and Gagne, 2018;Gillan et al, 2019). A.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

The elusive effects of incidental anxiety on reinforcement-learning

Ting¹,

Palminteri²,

Lebreton³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Anxiety is a common affective state, characterized by the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over an anticipated event. Anxiety is suspected to have important negative consequences on cognition, decision-making and learning. Yet, despite a recent surge in studies investigating the specific effects of anxiety on reinforcement-learning, no coherent picture has emerged. Here, we investigated the effects of incidental anxiety on instrumental reinforcement learning, while addressing several issues and defaults identified in a focused literature review. We used a rich experimental design, featuring both a learning and a transfer phase, and a manipulation of outcomes valence (gains vs losses). In two variants (N = 2x50) of this experimental paradigm, incidental anxiety was induced with an established threat-of-shock paradigm. Model-free results show that incidental anxiety effects seem limited to a small, but specific increase in post-learning performance measured by a transfer task. A comprehensive modelling effort revealed that, irrespective of the effects of anxiety, individuals give more weight to positive than negative outcomes, and tend to experience the omission of a loss as a gain (and vice versa). However, in line with results from our targeted literature survey, isolating specific computational effects of anxiety on learning per se proved to be challenging. Overall, our results suggest that learning mechanisms are more complex than traditionally presumed, and raise important concerns about the robustness of the effects of anxiety previously identified in simple reinforcement-learning studies.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

The elusive effects of incidental anxiety on reinforcement-learning

Ting¹,

Palminteri²,

Lebreton³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Aberrant anticipatory responding to upcoming uncertain threats has been proposed to be a common explanation of anxious states in healthy individuals and anxiety disorders alike (Grupe and Nitschke, 2013). Accordingly, our findings that anxiety leads to changes in informational and environmental uncertainty could prove relevant for understanding the alterations in decision-making and learning observed in anxiety disorders (Bishop and Gagne, 2018;Browning et al, 2015;de Visser et al, 2010;Huang et al, 2017;Miu et al, 2008).…”

Section: States Of Anxiety Bias Computations Of Different Types Of Unsupporting

confidence: 55%

“…Less understood is how temporary states of anxiety in healthy subjects interfere with optimal learning and belief updating in the brain. Identifying the computations that subserve learning under state anxiety is important due to the prevalence of highly anxious states in most real-world environments that are filled with uncertainty (Bach et al, 2011;Bishop and Gagne, 2018). In addition, these insights could expand our understanding of the mechanisms by which anxiety biases beliefs about the world, linking to anxiety-related disorders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

State anxiety biases estimates of uncertainty during reward learning in volatile environments

Hein

Weber

Fockert

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Previous research established that clinical anxiety impairs decision making and that high trait anxiety interferes with learning rates. Less understood are the effects of temporary anxious states on learning and decision making in healthy populations. Here we follow proposals that anxious states in healthy individuals elicit a pattern of aberrant behavioural, neural, and physiological responses comparable with those found in anxiety disorders, particularly when processing uncertainty in unstable environments. In our study, both a state anxious and a control group learned probabilistic stimulus-outcome mappings in a volatile task environment while we recorded their electrophysiological (EEG) signals. By using a hierarchical Bayesian model, we assessed the effect of state anxiety on Bayesian belief updating with a focus on uncertainty estimates. State anxiety was associated with an underestimation of environmental and informational uncertainty, and an increase in uncertainty about volatility estimates. Anxious individuals deemed their beliefs about reward contingencies to be more precise and to require less updating, ultimately leading to impaired reward-based learning. We interpret this pattern as evidence that state anxious individuals are less tolerant to informational uncertainty about the contingencies governing their environment and more uncertain about the level of stability of the world itself. Further, we tracked the neural representation of belief update signals in the trial-bytrial EEG amplitudes. In control participants, both lower-level precision-weighted prediction errors (pwPEs) about the reward outcomes and higher-level volatility-pwPEs were represented in the ERP signals with an anterior distribution. A different pattern emerged under state anxiety, where a neural representation of pwPEs was only found for updates about volatility. Expanding previous computational work on trait anxiety, our findings establish that temporary anxious states in healthy individuals impair reward-based learning in volatile environments, primarily through changes in uncertainty estimates and potentially a degradation of the neuronal representation of hierarchically-related pwPEs, considered to play a central role in current Bayesian accounts of perceptual inference and learning.

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“…Although anxious and depressive behaviors are usually comorbid [30], there are distinct characteristics in these two symptoms. Sonia and colleagues found that individuals with anxiety tend to avoid threat, whereas depression may be mostly identified as decreased pursuit of reward [31]. Considering the different changes in BDNF in stress-related (decreased BDNF in hippocampus) and reward-related systems (increased BDNF in VTA and NAc), stress-induced anxiety and depression may be associated with the degree of activation of different pathways.…”

Section: Bdnf Expression and Mood-related Brain Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationships Between Stress, Mental Disorders, and Epigenetic Regulation of BDNF

Zhang

Wang

Sun

2020

IJMS

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Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a critical member of the neurotrophic family, plays an important role in multiple stress-related mental disorders. Although alterations in BDNF in multiple brain regions of individuals experiencing stress have been demonstrated in previous studies, it appears that a set of elements are involved in the complex regulation. In this review, we summarize the specific brain regions with altered BDNF expression during stress exposure. How various environmental factors, including both physical and psychological stress, affect the expression of BDNF in specific brain regions are further summarized. Moreover, epigenetic regulation of BDNF, including DNA methylation, histone modification, and noncoding RNA, in response to diverse types of stress, as well as sex differences in the sensitivity of BDNF to the stress response, is also summarized. Clarification of the underlying role of BDNF in the stress process will promote our understanding of the pathology of stress-linked mental disorders and provide a potent target for the future treatment of stress-related illness.

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Anxiety, Depression, and Decision Making: A Computational Perspective

Cited by 182 publications

References 94 publications

The elusive effects of incidental anxiety on reinforcement-learning

The elusive effects of incidental anxiety on reinforcement-learning

State anxiety biases estimates of uncertainty during reward learning in volatile environments

The Relationships Between Stress, Mental Disorders, and Epigenetic Regulation of BDNF

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