Gigli Valeria, Castellano Paola, Ghezzi Valerio, Ang Yuen-Siang, Schettino Martino, Pizzagalli Diego A, Ottaviani Cristina
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Biol Psychiatry Glob Open Sci. 2024 Jul 31;4(6):100369. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100369. eCollection 2024 Nov.
Loneliness and social isolation have detrimental consequences for mental health and act as vulnerability factors for the development of depressive symptoms, such as anhedonia. The mitigation strategies used to contain COVID-19, such as social distancing and lockdowns, allowed us to investigate putative associations between daily objective and perceived social isolation and anhedonic-like behavior.
Reward-related functioning was objectively assessed using the Probabilistic Reward Task. A total of 114 unselected healthy individuals (71% female) underwent both a laboratory and an ecological momentary assessment. Computational modeling was applied to performance on the Probabilistic Reward Task to disentangle reward sensitivity and learning rate.
Findings revealed that objective, but not subjective, daily social interactions were associated with motivational behavior. Specifically, higher social isolation (less time spent with others) was associated with higher responsivity to rewarding stimuli and a reduced influence of a given reward on successive behavioral choices.
Overall, the current results broaden our knowledge of the potential pathways that link (COVID-19-related) social isolation to altered motivational functioning.
孤独和社会隔离对心理健康有不利影响，是诸如快感缺乏等抑郁症状发展的脆弱因素。为控制新冠疫情而采取的缓解策略，如社交距离和封锁措施，使我们能够研究日常客观的和感知到的社会隔离与类快感缺乏行为之间的假定关联。
使用概率奖励任务客观评估与奖励相关的功能。共有114名未经筛选的健康个体（71%为女性）接受了实验室评估和生态瞬时评估。应用计算模型分析概率奖励任务的表现，以区分奖励敏感性和学习率。
研究结果显示，日常客观的社交互动而非主观的社交互动与动机行为相关。具体而言，更高程度的社会隔离（与他人相处时间更少）与对奖励刺激的更高反应性以及给定奖励对连续行为选择的影响降低有关。
总体而言，当前结果拓宽了我们对将（与新冠疫情相关的）社会隔离与动机功能改变联系起来的潜在途径的认识。
