Habitual versus Goal-directed Action Control in Parkinson Disease

Abstract

Abstract■ This study presents the first direct investigation of the hypothesis that dopamine depletion of the dorsal striatum in mild Parkinson disease leads to impaired stimulus-response habit formation, thereby rendering behavior slow and effortful. However, using an instrumental conflict task, we show that patients are able to rely on direct stimulus-response associations when a goal-directed strategy causes response conflict, suggesting that habit formation is not impaired. If anything our results suggest a disease severity-dependent deficit in goaldirected behavior. These results are discussed in the context of Parkinson disease and the neurobiology of habitual and goaldirected behavior. ■

Behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for overreliance on habit learning in alcohol-dependent patients

“…For example, patients with Parkinson's disease show an imbalance between goal-directed and habit learning. 42  The involvement of dopamine in goal-directed action is further supported by a study using an experimental dopamine depletion paradigm. 43  Moreover, patients with an obsessive-compulsive disorder exhibit a similar imbalance, 44  suggesting a shared mechanism across different forms of compulsive behavior.…”

“…Briefly, the instrumental learning task was developed to distinguish between goal-directed and habit-based learning, 19  and has been used successfully in studies to establish habits in both animals and humans. 24,41, 42, 43, 44 The task consists of a discrimination training phase and an outcome-devaluation test phase.…”

“…Indeed, previous studies have demonstrated that both humans and animals adopt an S–R habitual learning strategy to solve this incongruent trial type. 19,41, 42, 43, 44  Contrasting blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD)-signal of the different trial types during the discrimination training phase allowed us to study neural correlates of the balance between the goal-directed and habit learning systems during instrumental learning (for the contrasts, see section Imaging Data Acquisition and Analysis).…”

Ventral striatal dopamine reflects behavioral and neural signatures of model-based control during sequential decision making

“…On the other hand, individual variation of striatal presynaptic dopamine, quantified using neurochemical imaging, is known to positively relate to variability in "prefrontal" cognitive capacities (17,18), which might also limit the capacity for model-based learning (19). Indeed, depletion of presynaptic dopamine precursors and Parkinson's disease both compromised goal-directed behavior in a devaluation experiment and a slips-of-action test, whereas habitual learning remained intact (20,21). Furthermore, a pharmacological challenge with L-DOPA, a manipulation known to boost overall brain dopamine levels, has been shown to enhance model-based over model-free choices in a sequential decisionmaking task (12).…”

Delusions and prediction error: re-examining the behavioural evidence for disrupted error signalling in delusion formation

“…For example, the concept of prediction error signalling plays a key role in the study of attention biases in substance-addicted populations (Hogarth, Dickinson, Janowksi, Nikitina, & Duka, 2008) and in investigations of goal-directed versus habitual behaviour in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; Gillan et al, 2011) and Parkinson's disease (de Wit, Barker, Dickinson, & Cools, 2011). The present paper is instead concerned with the study of prediction error signalling in the context of delusion formation.…”