Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China; Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Cognition and Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Hefei, China; Collaborative Innovation Center for Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Mental Health, Anhui, China.
Anhui Mental Health Center, Hefei, Anhui, China.
Psychiatry Res. 2018 Apr;262:246-253. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2017.12.040. Epub 2017 Dec 21.
Intertemporal choices are decisions with consequences in multiple time periods and constitute a significant part of social cognition. The shared neuropathological characteristics of patients with schizophrenia and their siblings might express intermediate phenotypes in behavior that could be used to further characterize the illness. Schizophrenic patients, unaffected siblings, and healthy controls underwent a computerized version of the "Intertemporal Choice Task". All participants could choose between sooner-smaller (SS) and later-larger (LL) options in now-trials and in not-now-trials. Subjects also underwent a battery of cognitive neuropsychological assessment. Our results indicated that schizophrenic patients and unaffected siblings both had a tendency to choose LL options in now-trials or not-now-trials compared to healthy controls. Schizophrenic patients had significantly lower scores in several cognitive tasks, including MoCA, attention, executive functions, and information processing when compared with the other two groups. Moreover, within the schizophrenic patient group, significant correlations were found between intertemporal decision-making performance and executive function. The present study showed that both schizophrenic patients and unaffected siblings preferred to choose larger-delayed rewards during intertemporal decision-making, which may result from frontal-striatal and frontal-parietal network dysfunction. Their intertemporal decision-making performance was associated with executive function performance.
跨期选择是指在多个时间段内具有后果的决策，构成了社会认知的重要部分。精神分裂症患者及其兄弟姐妹具有共同的神经病理学特征，这些特征可能在行为中表现出中间表型，可用于进一步描述疾病。精神分裂症患者、未受影响的兄弟姐妹和健康对照组接受了“跨期选择任务”的计算机化版本。所有参与者都可以在现在试验和非现在试验中选择更快更小（SS）和更晚更大（LL）的选项。研究对象还接受了一系列认知神经心理学评估。我们的结果表明，与健康对照组相比，精神分裂症患者和未受影响的兄弟姐妹在现在试验或非现在试验中都倾向于选择 LL 选项。与其他两组相比，精神分裂症患者在几项认知任务中的得分明显较低，包括 MoCA、注意力、执行功能和信息处理。此外，在精神分裂症患者组中，发现了跨期决策表现与执行功能之间的显著相关性。本研究表明，精神分裂症患者和未受影响的兄弟姐妹在跨期决策中都更喜欢选择较大的延迟奖励，这可能是由于额纹状体和额顶叶网络功能障碍所致。他们的跨期决策表现与执行功能表现相关。
