ABSTRACT
Background
Self-directed performance monitoring is a critical contributor to cognitive performance
and general functioning and is impacted by psychiatric symptoms and personality traits,
but has been understudied in psychosis-risk states. We have shown that ventral striatum
(VS) responds to correctness during cognitive tasks where no explicit feedback is
required, and this “intrinsic reinforcement” response is reduced in schizophrenia.
Methods
Here we examined this phenomenon in youth (n=796, age 11-22) from the Philadelphia
Neurodevelopmental Cohort (PNC) performing a working memory fMRI task. We hypothesized
that VS would respond to internal correctness monitoring while classic “salience network”
regions such as dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insular cortex
(AIC) would reflect internal error monitoring, and that these responses would increase
with age. We expected that neurobehavioral measures of performance monitoring would
be reduced in youth with subclinical psychosis spectrum (PS) features and correlate
with amotivation severity.
Results
Supporting these hypotheses, we found correct>incorrect activation in VS, and incorrect>correct
activation in ACC and AIC. Furthermore, VS activation was positively correlated with
age, reduced in PS, and inversely correlated with amotivation. However, these patterns
were not significant in ACC and AIC.
Conclusions
These findings advance our understanding of the neural underpinnings of performance
monitoring and its impairment in adolescents with PS. Such understanding can facilitate
investigation of the developmental trajectory of normative and aberrant performance
monitoring, contribute to early identification of youth at elevated risk for poor
academic, occupational, or psychiatric outcomes, and provide potential targets for
therapeutic development.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
January 24,
2023
Received in revised form:
January 23,
2023
Received:
October 23,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
Acknowledgements and Disclosures
This work was supported by RC2 grants from the National Institute of Mental Health MH089983 and MH089924, as well as P50MH096891 and T32MH019112. Additional support was provided by R01MH113565 (DHW), R01MH13550 (TDS), and K08MH079364 (MEC), as well as from the Penn-CHOP Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI).
The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
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© 2023 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
