Computational Psychiatry

Affective biases are commonly seen in disorders such as depression and anxiety, where individuals may show attention towards and preferential processing of negative or threatening stimuli. Affective biases have been shown to change with effective intervention: randomized controlled trials into these biases and the mechanisms that underpin them may allow greater understanding of how interventions can be improved and their success be maximized. For such trials to be informative, we must have reliable ways of measuring affective bias over time, so we can detect how and whether they are altered by interventions: the test-retest reliability of our measures puts an upper bound on our ability to detect any changes. In this online study we therefore examined the test-retest reliability of two behavioural affective bias tasks (an ‘Ambiguous Midpoint’ and a ‘Go-Nogo’ task). 58 individuals recruited from the general population completed the tasks twice, with at least 14 days in between sessions. We analysed the reliability of both summary statistics and parameters from computational models using Pearson’s correlations and intra-class correlations. Standard summary statistic measures from these affective bias tasks had reliabilities ranging from 0.18 (poor) to 0.49 (moderate). Parameters from computational modelling of these tasks were in many cases less reliable than summary statistics. However, embedding the covariance between sessions within the generative modelling framework resulted in higher estimates of stability. We conclude that measures from these affective bias tasks are moderately reliable, but further work to improve the reliability of these tasks would improve still further our ability to draw inferences in randomized trials.

Alexandra C. Pike

Katrina H. T. Tan

Hoda Tromblee

Michelle Wing

Oliver J. Robinson

Test-Retest Reliability of Two Computationally-Characterised Affective Bias Tasks

两种计算特征化情感偏差任务的重测信度

Amy M. Rapp

Brandon K. Ashinoff

Seth Baker

H. Blair Simpson

Guillermo Horga

Transdiagnostic Anxiety-Related Increases in Information Sampling are Associated With Altered Valuation

跨诊断焦虑相关信息采样增加与价值评估改变相关

In response to shortcomings of the current classification system in translating discoveries from basic science to clinical applications, NIMH offers a new framework for studying mental health disorders called Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). This framework holds a multidimensional outlook on psychopathologies focusing on functional domains of behavior and their implementing neural circuits. In parallel, the Predictive Processing (PP) framework stands as a leading theory of human brain function, offering a unified explanation for various types of information processing in the brain. While both frameworks share an interest in studying psychopathologies based on pathophysiology, their integration still needs to be explored. Here, we argued in favor of the explanatory power of PP to be a groundwork for the RDoC matrix in validating its constructs and creating testable hypotheses about mechanistic interactions between molecular biomarkers and clinical traits. Together, predictive processing may serve as a foundation for achieving the goals of the RDoC framework.

Anahita Khorrami Banaraki

Armin Toghi

Azar Mohammadzadeh

RDoC Framework Through the Lens of Predictive Processing: Focusing on Cognitive Systems Domain

预测处理视角下的RDoC框架：聚焦认知系统领域

In many studies of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stimulus encoding and processing (perceptual function) and response selection (executive function) have been intertwined. To dissociate deficits in these functions, we introduced a task that parametrically varied low-level stimulus features (orientation and color) for fine-grained analysis of perceptual function. It also required participants to switch their attention between feature dimensions on a trial-by-trial basis, thus taxing executive processes. Furthermore, we used a response paradigm that captured task-irrelevant motor output (TIMO), reflecting failures to use the correct stimulus-response rule. ADHD participants had substantially higher perceptual variability than controls, especially for orientation, as well as higher TIMO. In both ADHD and controls, TIMO was strongly affected by the switch manipulation. Across participants, the perceptual variability parameter was correlated with TIMO, suggesting that perceptual deficits are associated with executive function deficits. Based on perceptual variability alone, we were able to classify participants into ADHD and controls with a mean accuracy of about 77%. Participants' self-reported General Executive Composite score correlated not only with TIMO but also with the perceptual variability parameter. Our results highlight the role of perceptual deficits in ADHD and the usefulness of computational modeling of behavior in dissociating perceptual from executive processes.

Andra Mihali

Allison G. Young

Lenard A. Adler

Michael M. Halassa

Wei Ji Ma

A Low-Level Perceptual Correlate of Behavioral and Clinical Deficits in ADHD

注意缺陷多动障碍中行为和临床缺陷的低水平知觉相关因素

Recently, applying computational models developed in cognitive science to psychiatric disorders has been recognized as an essential approach for understanding cognitive mechanisms underlying psychiatric symptoms. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is hypothesized to affect information processes in the brain involving the estimation of sensory precision (uncertainty), but the mechanism by which observed symptoms are generated from such abnormalities has not been thoroughly investigated. Using a humanoid robot controlled by a neural network using a precision-weighted prediction error minimization mechanism, it is suggested that both increased and decreased sensory precision could induce the behavioral rigidity characterized by resistance to change that is characteristic of autistic behavior. Specifically, decreased sensory precision caused any error signals to be disregarded, leading to invariability of the robot's intention, while increased sensory precision caused an excessive response to error signals, leading to fluctuations and subsequent fixation of intention. The results may provide a system-level explanation of mechanisms underlying different types of behavioral rigidity in autism spectrum and other psychiatric disorders. In addition, our findings suggest that symptoms caused by decreased and increased sensory precision could be distinguishable by examining the internal experience of patients and neural activity coding prediction error signals in the biological brain.

Hayato Idei

Shingo Murata

Yiwen Chen

Yuichi Yamashita

Jun Tani

Tetsuya Ogata

A Neurorobotics Simulation of Autistic Behavior Induced by Unusual Sensory Precision

神经机器人模拟由异常感觉精度引起的自闭症行为

In value-based decision-making there is wide behavioural variability in how individuals respond to uncertainty. Maladaptive responses to uncertainty have been linked to a vulnerability to mental illness, for example, between risk aversion and affective disorders. Here, we examine individual differences in risk sensitivity when subjects confront options drawn from different value distributions, where these embody the same or different means and variances. In simulations, we show that a model that learns a distribution using Bayes’ rule and reads out different parts of the distribution under the influence of a risk-sensitive parameter (Conditional Value at Risk, CVaR) predicts how likely an agent is to prefer a broader over a narrow distribution (pro-variance bias/risk-seeking) under the same overall means. Using empirical data, we show that CVaR estimates correlate with participants’ pro-variance biases better than a range of alternative parameters derived from other models. Importantly, across two independent samples, CVaR estimates and participants’ pro-variance bias negatively correlated with trait rumination, a common trait in depression and anxiety. We conclude that a Bayesian-CVaR model captures individual differences in sensitivity to variance in value distributions and task-independent trait dispositions linked to affective disorders.

Wanjun Lin

Raymond J. Dolan

Decision-Making, Pro-variance Biases and Mood-Related Traits

决策、亲方差偏差与情绪相关特质

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically hold altered beliefs about their body that they struggle to update, including global, prospective beliefs about their ability to know and regulate their body and particularly their interoceptive states. While clinical questionnaire studies have provided ample evidence on the role of such beliefs in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of AN, psychophysical studies have typically focused on perceptual and ‘local’ beliefs. Across two experiments, we examined how women at the acute AN (N = 86) and post-acute AN state (N = 87), compared to matched healthy controls (N = 180) formed and updated their self-efficacy beliefs retrospectively (Experiment 1) and prospectively (Experiment 2) about their heartbeat counting abilities in an adapted heartbeat counting task. As preregistered, while AN patients did not differ from controls in interoceptive accuracy per se, they hold and maintain ‘pessimistic’ interoceptive, metacognitive self-efficacy beliefs after performance. Modelling using a simplified computational Bayesian learning framework showed that neither local evidence from performance, nor retrospective beliefs following that performance (that themselves were suboptimally updated) seem to be sufficient to counter and update pessimistic, self-efficacy beliefs in AN. AN patients showed lower learning rates than controls, revealing a tendency to base their posterior beliefs more on prior beliefs rather than prediction errors in both retrospective and prospective belief updating. Further explorations showed that while these differences in both explicit beliefs, and the latent mechanisms of belief updating, were not explained by general cognitive flexibility differences, they were explained by negative mood comorbidity, even after the acute stage of illness.

Alkistis Saramandi

Laura Crucianelli

Athanasios Koukoutsakis

Veronica Nisticò

Liza Mavromara

Diana Goeta

Giovanni Boido

Fragiskos Gonidakis

Benedetta Demartini

Sara Bertelli

Orsola Gambini

Paul M Jenkinson

Aikaterini Fotopoulou

Updating Prospective Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Cardiac Interoception in Anorexia Nervosa: An Experimental and Computational Study

更新神经性厌食症患者关于心脏内感受的前瞻性自我效能信念：一项实验与计算研究

Alfred Hitchcock, film director and “Master of Suspense,” observed that terror is not driven by a negative event, but “only in the anticipation of it.” This observation is not restricted to the movies: Anxiety builds when we anticipate uncertain negative events, and heightened reactivity during uncertain threat anticipation is a transdiagnostic marker of anxiety (Grupe &amp; Nitschke, 2013; Holley &amp; Fox, 2022; Hur et al., 2020; Krain et al., 2008; Simmons et al., 2008; Yassa et al., 2012). Here, we manipulate the temporal dynamics of an uncertain threat to demonstrate how the evolving expectation of threat can lead people to forgo rewards and experience fear/anxiety. Specifically, we show that increased “hazard rate,” which can build during periods of uncertainty, promotes a tendency to avoid threatening contexts while increasing fear/anxiety. These results provide insight into why the anticipation of temporally uncertain threats elicits fear/anxiety, and reframe the underlying causes of related psychopathology.

Dan Holley

Erica A. Varga

Erie D. Boorman

Andrew S. Fox

Temporal Dynamics of Uncertainty Cause Anxiety and Avoidance

不确定性时间动态引发焦虑和回避

In patients with mood disorders, negative affective biases - systematically prioritising and interpreting information negatively - are common. A translational cognitive task testing this bias has shown that depressed patients have a reduced preference for a high reward under ambiguous decision-making conditions. The precise mechanisms underscoring this bias are, however, not yet understood. We therefore developed a set of measures to probe the underlying source of the behavioural bias by testing its relationship to a participant's reward sensitivity, value sensitivity and reward learning rate. One-hundred-forty-eight participants completed three online behavioural tasks: the original ambiguous-cue decision-making task probing negative affective bias, a probabilistic reward learning task probing reward sensitivity and reward learning rate, and a gambling task probing value sensitivity. We modelled the learning task through a dynamic signal detection theory model and the gambling task through an expectation-maximisation prospect theory model. Reward sensitivity from the probabilistic reward task (

Isabel K Lütkenherm

Shannon M Locke

Oliver J Robinson

Reward Sensitivity and Noise Contribute to Negative Affective Bias: A Learning Signal Detection Theory Approach in Decision-Making

奖励敏感性和噪声对负性情感偏差的影响：决策中的学习信号检测理论方法

Publication Information	Publisher: Ubiquity Press，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: Yes
Basic data	Year of publication: 2019，Proportion of original research papers: 0.00%，Self Citation Rate:N.A.， Gold OA Rate: 0.00%
Journal Fees	$2388Details
Average review cycle	17 weeks

Computational Psychiatry

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Test-Retest Reliability of Two Computationally-Characterised Affective Bias Tasks

Transdiagnostic Anxiety-Related Increases in Information Sampling are Associated With Altered Valuation

RDoC Framework Through the Lens of Predictive Processing: Focusing on Cognitive Systems Domain

A Low-Level Perceptual Correlate of Behavioral and Clinical Deficits in ADHD

A Neurorobotics Simulation of Autistic Behavior Induced by Unusual Sensory Precision

Test-Retest Reliability of Two Computationally-Characterised Affective Bias Tasks

Decision-Making, Pro-variance Biases and Mood-Related Traits

Updating Prospective Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Cardiac Interoception in Anorexia Nervosa: An Experimental and Computational Study

Temporal Dynamics of Uncertainty Cause Anxiety and Avoidance

Reward Sensitivity and Noise Contribute to Negative Affective Bias: A Learning Signal Detection Theory Approach in Decision-Making