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Do patients with schizophrenia exhibit aberrant salience?
J P Roiser1, K E Stephan, H E M den Ouden
1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK. j.roiser@ucl.ac.uk
Psychological Medicine
|July 1, 2008
Summary
Patients with schizophrenia show impaired reward learning, specifically reduced adaptive salience. Aberrant salience is linked to delusions and negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Psychotic symptoms may stem from aberrant salience and dysfunctional reward learning.
- Investigating aberrant salience in schizophrenia is crucial for understanding symptom mechanisms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients exhibit impaired learning of stimulus-reinforcement associations.
- To examine aberrant salience in the context of task-relevant and task-irrelevant cues in schizophrenia.
Main Methods:
- A reaction time game, the Salience Attribution Test, was used.
- 20 medicated patients with schizophrenia and 17 controls were tested.
- Adaptive and aberrant motivational salience were calculated based on response latency and subjective reinforcement probability.
Main Results:
- Schizophrenia patients showed reduced adaptive salience compared to controls.
- Aberrant salience did not differ between groups, but was higher in patients with delusions.
- Aberrant salience correlated with negative symptoms in patients and schizotypy in controls.
Conclusions:
- Aberrant salience is linked to delusions and negative symptoms in medicated schizophrenia patients.
- Findings support the aberrant salience hypothesis in schizophrenia.
- Further research on unmedicated patients is warranted.
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