Boosting Serotonin Increases Information Gathering by Reducing Subjective Cognitive Costs.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Pharmacology

Background:

• Serotonin influences the valuation of costs like delay and physical effort.
• The role of serotonin in cognitive effort, such as deliberation costs, is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate serotonin's effect on sensitivity to cognitive effort during information gathering.
• To determine if serotonergic antidepressants alter the willingness to gather information for reward maximization.

Main Methods:

• Administered a serotonergic antidepressant to healthy human participants.
• Utilized computational modeling to analyze decision-making processes during information sampling.
• Assessed changes in willingness to gather information and subjective deliberation costs.

Main Results:

• Serotonergic antidepressant treatment enhanced the willingness to gather information for reward.
• Computational modeling revealed diminished sensitivity to subjective deliberation costs.
• Information gathering became less cognitively effortful under serotonergic treatment.

Conclusions:

• Serotonin may alleviate sensitivity to aversive costs in a domain-general manner.
• Findings suggest a potential mechanism for how serotonergic treatment could improve motivational deficits in psychiatric disorders.
• Reduced perception of cognitive effort costs is a key effect of serotonergic antidepressants on decision-making.