Division of Neuropsychiatry, Department of Neuroscience, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, 755-8505, Japan.
Center for Data Science, Waseda University, 1-6-1 Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan.
J Psychiatr Res. 2022 Oct;154:307-314. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.08.003. Epub 2022 Aug 9.
Early prediction of high depressive symptoms is crucial for selective intervention and the minimization of functional impairment. Recent cross-sectional studies indicated decision-making deficits in depression, which may be an important contributor to the disorder. Our goal was to test whether description- and experience-based decision making, two major neuroeconomic paradigms of decision-making under uncertainty, predict future depressive symptoms in young adults.
One hundred young adults performed two decision-making tasks, one description-based, in which subjects chose between two gambling options given explicitly stated rewards and their probabilities, and the other experience-based, in which subjects were shown rewards but had to learn the probability of those rewards (or cue-outcome contingencies) via trial-and-error experience. We evaluated subjects' depressive symptoms with BDI-II at baseline (T1) and half a year later (T2).
Comparing subjects with low versus high levels of depressive symptoms at T2 showed that the latter performed worse on the experience- but not description-based task at T1. Computational modeling of the decision-making process suggested that subjects with high levels of depressive symptoms had a more concave utility function, indicating enhanced risk aversion. Furthermore, a more concave utility function at T1 increased the odds of high depressive symptoms at T2, even after controlling depressive symptoms at T1, perceived stress at T2, and several covariates (OR = 0.251, 95% CI [0.085, 0.741]).
This is the first study to demonstrate a prospective link between experience-based decision-making and depressive symptoms. Our results suggest that enhanced risk aversion in experience-based decision-making may be an important contributor to the development of depressive symptoms.
早期预测高抑郁症状对于选择性干预和最小化功能障碍至关重要。最近的横断面研究表明，抑郁患者存在决策缺陷，这可能是导致该疾病的一个重要因素。我们的目标是检验基于描述和基于经验的决策，这两个不确定条件下的主要神经经济学决策范式，是否能预测年轻人未来的抑郁症状。
100 名年轻人参与了两项决策任务，一项是基于描述的任务，在该任务中，被试根据明确给出的奖励及其概率在两个赌博选项之间进行选择；另一项是基于经验的任务，在该任务中，被试看到奖励，但必须通过试错经验来学习奖励的概率（或线索-结果关联）。我们在基线（T1）和半年后（T2）使用 BDI-II 评估被试的抑郁症状。
比较 T2 时低抑郁症状和高抑郁症状的被试，发现后者在 T1 时基于经验的任务表现更差，而基于描述的任务则没有。对决策过程的计算建模表明，高抑郁症状的被试具有更凹的效用函数，表明他们更倾向于风险规避。此外，T1 时更凹的效用函数增加了 T2 时出现高抑郁症状的几率，即使在控制了 T1 时的抑郁症状、T2 时的感知压力以及几个协变量后（OR=0.251，95%CI[0.085, 0.741]）。
这是第一项证明基于经验的决策与抑郁症状之间存在前瞻性联系的研究。我们的结果表明，基于经验的决策中的风险规避增强可能是抑郁症状发展的一个重要因素。
