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Common Neural Deficits in Social and Monetary Reinforcement Learning in Schizophrenia.

Jay Nierenberg^1,2, Jaisal T Merchant³, Matthew J Hoptman^1,2

¹Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, United States.

Schizophrenia Bulletin

|June 27, 2025

Summary

Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) show similar brain activation patterns to social and monetary reinforcement learning (RL). However, they struggle to use feedback to guide choices, indicating potential issues with expected value computations.

Keywords:

fMRI orbitofrontal cortex reward learning social cognition striatum

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psychiatry
Cognitive Science

Background:

Schizophrenia (SZ) is linked to deficits in reinforcement learning (RL) from monetary feedback.
Social functioning deficits are common in SZ, but neural processes for social RL are understudied.
This study compares neural activation during social RL versus monetary RL in SZ.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate neural activation differences in schizophrenia during social and monetary reinforcement learning.
To compare brain activity during choice selection and feedback processing in social vs. monetary RL tasks.
To explore the relationship between neural activation and behavioral performance in RL tasks for individuals with SZ.

Main Methods:

Thirty participants with SZ and 31 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during probabilistic RL tasks.
Tasks involved both social and monetary feedback with positive and negative valences.
Region of interest analyses focused on reward, learning, and social processing areas, examining neural activity during choice and outcome phases.

Main Results:

Individuals with SZ exhibited reduced activation in the caudate and orbitofrontal cortex during the choice phase across both social and monetary RL tasks.
Neural activation patterns during feedback receipt (Outcome phase) were similar between social and monetary RL for both groups.
Brain activation during RL was not significantly correlated with behavioral RL performance in either group.

Conclusions:

Schizophrenia patients may have intact neural responses to feedback but difficulties in recruiting circuitry for choice modulation based on expected values.
These findings suggest that neural activation patterns during social RL in SZ are comparable to those observed in monetary RL.
The results highlight potential computational deficits in schizophrenia that impact adaptive decision-making in both social and non-social contexts.