The Importance of Common Currency Tasks in Translational Psychiatry

Abstract

Purpose of Review Common currency tasks are tasks that investigate the same phenomenon in different species. In this review, we discuss how to ensure the translational validity of common currency tasks, summarise their benefits, present recent research in this area and offer future directions and recommendations. Recent Findings We discuss the strengths and limitations of three specific examples where common currency tasks have added to our understanding of psychiatric constructs—affective bias, reversal learning and goal-based decision making. Summary Overall, common currency tasks offer the potential to improve drug discovery in psychiatry. We recommend that researchers prioritise construct validity above face validity when designing common currency tasks and suggest that the evidence for construct validity is summarised in papers presenting research in this area.

Reinforcement Learning in Patients With Mood and Anxiety Disorders vs Control Individuals

“…In particular, individualized measures of learning rate balance could be obtained using straightforward behavioral tasks, thus allowing dose personalization and early indications of drug efficacy for individuals. This end point is also translationally valuable, as learning rates can also be measured in animals, potentially allowing preclinical drug discovery work . This meta-analysis therefore provides a possible first step toward connecting different levels of analysis in mental health research, from behavioral symptoms to the underlying neurobiology and pharmacology.…”

Are Fear and Anxiety Truly Distinct?

“…Here, we identify a number of challenges relating to how well tasks map across rodents and humans (face validity) and how similar the underlying constructs are in their application across species (construct validity). While the predictive validity, or how well the task is able to make predictions about future outcomes, such as response to treatment ( 59 , 60 ), may prove useful in establishing the success of these models, we focus primarily on the two former criteria.…”

Cross-species anxiety tests in psychiatry: pitfalls and promises

“…A plethora of research suggests that the brain may contain multiple decision-making systems [ 52 ], and that the human mind or brain may solve abstract, deliberate decisions different from implicit choices [ 53 ], in particular under threat [ 54 , 55 ]. To corroborate that comparable decision-making systems are invoked when a test is translated across species [ 56 ], we apply the same criteria that are used to validate disease models. One is predictive validity: the same treatments that reduce anxiety-like behaviour in animals should reduce anxiety-like behaviour in the human test.…”