Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, USA; Psychology Field Group, Pitzer College, USA.
Department of Neurology, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, USA; Neurology Service, New Mexico Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, USA.
Brain Res. 2020 Jan 15;1727:146541. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2019.146541. Epub 2019 Nov 5.
The electroencephalographic signal known as the Reward Positivity (RewP) scales with the reward prediction error following reward receipt. This signal is computationally identical to the dopamine-driven learning process relating to the discrepancy between reward expectation and reward acquisition. The current study aimed to investigate if the RewP is diminished in Parkinson's disease (PD). In this study, 28 people with PD and 28 age- and sex-matched healthy controls completed a reinforcement-learning task. In line with expectations, the RewP was smaller in persons with PD than in controls. Yet contrary to expectations, RewP amplitude did not differ in on vs. off medication conditions, and it was positively correlated with the number of years diagnosed with PD. We propose that this symptom-specific alteration in RewP may be a consequence of a common methodological procedure in PD research (e.g. restricted recruitment) or it might truly be a marker of early-stage disease (e.g. prior to network re-adaptation). These surprising findings motivate separate testable hypotheses for assessing aspects of PD with this novel neural marker of reward.
被称为奖励正波（RewP）的脑电图信号随着奖励接收后的奖励预测误差而变化。该信号在计算上与涉及奖励预期与奖励获取之间差异的多巴胺驱动学习过程相同。本研究旨在探讨帕金森病（PD）患者的 RewP 是否减少。在这项研究中，28 名 PD 患者和 28 名年龄和性别匹配的健康对照者完成了一项强化学习任务。与预期一致，PD 患者的 RewP 小于对照组。然而，与预期相反，RewP 幅度在用药与停药状态之间没有差异，并且与 PD 诊断年限呈正相关。我们提出，RewP 的这种特定于症状的改变可能是 PD 研究中常见的方法学程序的结果（例如，限制招募），或者它可能真的是疾病早期阶段的标志物（例如，在网络重新适应之前）。这些令人惊讶的发现为使用这种新的奖励神经标志物评估 PD 的各个方面提供了可单独检验的假设。
