Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning

Abstract Unavoidable stress can lead to perceived lack of control and learned helplessness, a risk factor for depression. Avoiding punishment and gaining rewards involve updating the values of actions based on experience. Such updating is however useful only if action values are sufficiently stable,...

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Main Authors: Marc Guitart-Masip, Amy Walsh, Peter Dayan, Andreas Olsson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2023-10-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45179-z
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author Marc Guitart-Masip
Amy Walsh
Peter Dayan
Andreas Olsson
author_facet Marc Guitart-Masip
Amy Walsh
Peter Dayan
Andreas Olsson
author_sort Marc Guitart-Masip
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Unavoidable stress can lead to perceived lack of control and learned helplessness, a risk factor for depression. Avoiding punishment and gaining rewards involve updating the values of actions based on experience. Such updating is however useful only if action values are sufficiently stable, something that a lack of control may impair. We examined whether self-reported stress uncontrollability during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted impaired reward-learning. In a preregistered study during the first-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we used self-reported measures of depression, anxiety, uncontrollable stress, and COVID-19 risk from 427 online participants to predict performance in a three-armed-bandit probabilistic reward learning task. As hypothesised, uncontrollable stress predicted impaired learning, and a greater proportion of probabilistic errors following negative feedback for correct choices, an effect mediated by state anxiety. A parameter from the best-fitting hidden Markov model that estimates expected beliefs that the identity of the optimal choice will shift across images, mediated effects of state anxiety on probabilistic errors and learning deficits. Our findings show that following uncontrollable stress, anxiety promotes an overly volatile representation of the reward-structure of uncertain environments, impairing reward attainment, which is a potential path to anhedonia in depression.
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spelling doaj.art-b6db0e024ac74f9097129a554bb023342023-10-29T12:21:28ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222023-10-0113111410.1038/s41598-023-45179-zAnxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learningMarc Guitart-Masip0Amy Walsh1Peter Dayan2Andreas Olsson3Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Aging Research CentreDepartment of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Aging Research CentreMax Planck Institute for Biological CyberneticsCenter for Psychiatry Research, Region StockholmAbstract Unavoidable stress can lead to perceived lack of control and learned helplessness, a risk factor for depression. Avoiding punishment and gaining rewards involve updating the values of actions based on experience. Such updating is however useful only if action values are sufficiently stable, something that a lack of control may impair. We examined whether self-reported stress uncontrollability during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted impaired reward-learning. In a preregistered study during the first-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we used self-reported measures of depression, anxiety, uncontrollable stress, and COVID-19 risk from 427 online participants to predict performance in a three-armed-bandit probabilistic reward learning task. As hypothesised, uncontrollable stress predicted impaired learning, and a greater proportion of probabilistic errors following negative feedback for correct choices, an effect mediated by state anxiety. A parameter from the best-fitting hidden Markov model that estimates expected beliefs that the identity of the optimal choice will shift across images, mediated effects of state anxiety on probabilistic errors and learning deficits. Our findings show that following uncontrollable stress, anxiety promotes an overly volatile representation of the reward-structure of uncertain environments, impairing reward attainment, which is a potential path to anhedonia in depression.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45179-z
spellingShingle Marc Guitart-Masip
Amy Walsh
Peter Dayan
Andreas Olsson
Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
Scientific Reports
title Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
title_full Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
title_fullStr Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
title_full_unstemmed Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
title_short Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
title_sort anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45179-z
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