Compulsivity Across the Pathological Misuse of Drug and Non-Drug Rewards
AUTHOR(S)
PUBLISHED
2016 in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 10, pp. 154.
KEY FINDINGS
- Study participants with compulsive sexual behavior demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to reward outcomes with faster acquisition and greater perseveration with higher magnitude rewards.
ABSTRACT
Behavioral adaptation is required for the successful navigation of a constantly changing environment. Impairments in behavioral flexibility are commonly observed in psychiatric disorders including those of addiction. This study investigates two distinct facets of compulsivity, namely reversal learning and attentional set shifting, implicating orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal regions respectively, across disorders of primary and secondary rewards. Obese subjects with and without binge eating disorder (BED), individuals... READ FULL ABSTRACT
EXCERPTS
- "This study provides evidence for differential cognitive flexibility impairments across different pathologies of drug and non-drug rewards as measured by two distinct behavioral paradigms: reversal learning and attentional set-shifting. Although we did not measure the neural correlates of these distinct cognitive processes in the present study, agreement on the substrates of these different tasks has evolved with the use of higher precision technology in rodent and nonhuman primate species and fMRI in humans. The literature consistently implicates differing aspects of fronto-striatal circuitry in reversal learning and attentional set-shifting, namely orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal cortices respectively."
