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Increased random exploration in schizophrenia is associated with inflammation

Cathomas, Flurin; Klaus, Federica; Guetter, Karoline; Chung, Hui-Kuan; Raja Beharelle, Anjali; Spiller, Tobias R; Schlegel, Rebecca; Seifritz, Erich; Hartmann-Riemer, Matthias N; Tobler, Philippe N; Kaiser, Stefan (2021). Increased random exploration in schizophrenia is associated with inflammation. npj Schizophrenia, 7:6.

Abstract

One aspect of goal-directed behavior, which is known to be impaired in patients with schizophrenia (SZ), is balancing between exploiting a familiar choice with known reward value and exploring a lesser known, but potentially more rewarding option. Despite its relevance to several symptom domains of SZ, this has received little attention in SZ research. In addition, while there is increasing evidence that SZ is associated with chronic low-grade inflammation, few studies have investigated how this relates to specific behaviors, such as balancing exploration and exploitation. We therefore assessed behaviors underlying the exploration–exploitation trade-off using a three-armed bandit task in 45 patients with SZ and 19 healthy controls (HC). This task allowed us to dissociate goal-unrelated (random) from goal-related (directed) exploration and correlate them with psychopathological symptoms. Moreover, we assessed a broad range of inflammatory proteins in the blood and related them to bandit task behavior. We found that, compared to HC, patients with SZ showed reduced task performance. This impairment was due to a shift from exploitation to random exploration, which was associated with symptoms of disorganization. Relative to HC, patients with SZ showed a pro-inflammatory blood profile. Furthermore, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) positively correlated with random exploration, but not with directed exploration or exploitation. In conclusion, we show that low-grade inflammation in patients with SZ is associated with random exploration, which can be considered a behavioral marker for disorganization. hsCRP may constitute a marker for severity of, and a potential treatment target for maladaptive exploratory behaviors.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:03 Faculty of Economics > Department of Economics
04 Faculty of Medicine > Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich > Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics
Dewey Decimal Classification:330 Economics
Scopus Subject Areas:Health Sciences > Psychiatry and Mental Health
Uncontrolled Keywords:Biomarkers, human behaviour
Scope:Discipline-based scholarship (basic research)
Language:English
Date:3 February 2021
Deposited On:16 Apr 2021 14:31
Last Modified:25 Oct 2024 01:39
Publisher:Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:2334-265X
OA Status:Gold
Free access at:PubMed ID. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41537-020-00133-0
Related URLs:https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.15.989483v1
PubMed ID:33536449
Other Identification Number:merlin-id:20995
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  • Language: English
  • Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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