Dynamics of motivated decision-making in striatal disorders 1.1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Dynamics of motivated decision-making in striatal disorders
IRAS ID
336513
Contact name
Matthew Broome
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 1 days
Research summary
Objectives: The main objective of the research is to examine decision-making in two clinical groups; those with early psychosis (clinical high risk or first episode) and with Parkinson's disease, to see whether apathy scores or individual descriptions of symptoms correlate with specific patterns of decision-making.
Background:
Motivation problems (apathy) are common in both Parkinson's disease and psychosis. Our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and neuroscience has increased in recent years, in particular through decision-making experiments, including those incorporating effort as an outcome, and by applying computational modelling to behavioural data, enabling better characterisation of the putative processes/calculations occurring in the brain. In both Parkinson's disease and psychosis, affected individuals choose to invest less effort in pursuit of goals, which appears to be correlated with negative symptom burden and/or apathy.This research aims to better understand the cognitive processes underlying apathy in individual patients, in particular how effort and choices involving multiple alternatives can affect decision-making.
Procedure:
The research will aim to recruit ~100 people with or at high risk of psychosis and ~100 people with Parkinson's disease, who will perform a novel, computer-based cognitive task. The task requires participants to make decisions that probe different motivational processes. These include decisions when the outcome is either effort or reward, and effects of multiple alternative options on decision-making. By applying computational modelling (using well-validated evidence-accumulation models) to behavioural data, more nuanced information about things like information processing and attention (drift rates) and caution (response thresholds) can be quantified. Behavioural data can in turn be correlated with motivation symptoms gleaned from validated questionnaires, whilst a subset of participants will undergo a more in-depth interview to explore motivation symptoms in greater detail. It is predicted that apathy symptoms/dimensions may correlate with specific patterns of decision-making in the task, possibly reflective of different underlying neural mechanisms.REC name
London - South East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/LO/0512
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jul 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion