Temporal credit assignment in alcohol use disorder
Poster No:
905
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Jiwon Park1, Manjae Kwon2,3, Young-Chul Jung2,3, Dongil Chung1
Institutions:
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Korea, Republic of, 2Department of Psychiatry, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, Republic of, 3Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, Republic of
First Author:
Jiwon Park
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Ulsan, Korea, Republic of
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Ulsan, Korea, Republic of
Co-Author(s):
Manjae Kwon
Department of Psychiatry, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine|Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Seoul, Korea, Republic of|Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Department of Psychiatry, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine|Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Seoul, Korea, Republic of|Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Young-Chul Jung
Department of Psychiatry, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine|Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Seoul, Korea, Republic of|Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Department of Psychiatry, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine|Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine
Seoul, Korea, Republic of|Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Dongil Chung
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Ulsan, Korea, Republic of
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Ulsan, Korea, Republic of
Introduction:
Decisions made in the present usually result in immediate outcomes. However, the timing of the consequences of our choices can sometimes be uncertain. For instance, diseases may develop much later as a result of unhealthy eating habits. Given such temporal uncertainty, having the ability to correctly attribute outcomes to a specific choice made in the past is crucial for making decisions that have long-term benefits, such as in matters related to health. Previous studies suggested that individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) may have a diminished ability to learn from experience and show shortsighted behavioral patterns. However, it is still unclear if there is a specific association between individual's substance use and their comprehension of causal relationships between action and outcomes. In this study, we hypothesize that individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) may have a biased tendency to attribute reward outcomes, or omission of rewards, more to recent choices than to those made in the distant past.
Methods:
60 participants were recruited for the current study. Participants were initially screened with Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT), and were further interviewed by a board-certified psychiatrist to determine their categorization based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) criteria for alcohol use disorder. 29 individuals were categorized as the AUD group and 31 individuals were categorized as the healthy control (HC) group. Participants were asked to make a series of choices between two options where the reward contingency associated with each option could only be learned through experience. Most importantly, reward outcomes were temporally delayed, such that individuals were informed about the consequence of each choice only after an uncertain delay, sampled from a Poisson distribution. After each choice, the reward outcomes delayed to the corresponding trial were summed and displayed on the screen. All participants underwent functional neuroimaging during the task, and upon completion, they reported their beliefs about the immediate and long-term effects of drinking on a 21-point scale (-10: very negative; +10: very positive). To investigate how individuals attributed rewards across their choices in past trials, we conducted linear regression analyses, with individuals' choices as dependent variables and three sets of potential causal choice-outcome associations (immediate, 1-back, and 2-back) as independent variables.
Results:
In the HC group, regression coefficients for the associations between choices and delayed outcomes (1- and 2- back) surpassed those between choices and immediate outcomes. Notably, the effects of 2-back associations were significantly larger than those of the immediate or 1-back associations. On the other hand, the AUD group did not exhibit a similar emphasis on long-term associations over the immediate ones. Specifically, the effects of 1- and 2- back associations between choices and delayed outcomes were significantly diminished in the AUD group compared to the HC group. Self-reports showed that, regardless of AUD diagnosis, both groups believed the immediate outcome of drinking to be positive, whereas they believed the long-term outcome of drinking to be negative.
Conclusions:
The regression results suggest that healthy individuals incorporate the long-term consequences of their choices in learning, while this pattern was diminished in individuals with alcohol use disorder. Task-independent self-reports suggest that individuals' alcohol using behavior cannot be accounted for by their biased beliefs about health risks associated with alcohol. Together, our data show that alcohol use disorder is associated with individuals' biased tendency to attribute outcomes to recent choices, and suggest that such biases in temporal credit attribution may underlie their habitual and excessive alcohol use behavior.
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Decision Making 1
Executive Function, Cognitive Control and Decision Making 2
Reasoning and Problem Solving
Keywords:
Addictions
Computational Neuroscience
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Learning
Memory
Other - credit assignment, probabilistic reward learning, alcohol use
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Jocham, Gerhard, et al. "Reward-guided learning with and without causal attribution." Neuron 90.1 (2016): 177-190.
Galandra, Caterina, et al. "Impaired learning from regret and disappointment in alcohol use disorder." Scientific Reports 10.1 (2020): 12104.Galandra, Caterina, et al. "Impaired learning from regret and disappointment in alcohol use disorder." Scientific Reports 10.1 (2020): 12104.