About this Research Topic

Background

A huge body of work on understanding each of many psychiatric conditions in the context of behaviours, neural correlates and intervention is available and still on-going. One area of research that is rapidly gaining ground is that of impaired decision making in psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, OCD, schizophrenia, etc. The role of more abstract constructs such as emotion, effort and motivation in utility or value computation and action selection or policy making is still quite nascent. This Research Topic attempts to bring together research projects that address this need.

Mental Health is rapidly gaining the much needed attention across the globe, with special initiatives by various organizations including the World Health Organization with a focus on middle and low income countries, National Institute of Health (NIH) in US, National Health Services, UK and National Mental Health Program, India.

The study of mental health including psychiatric conditions has exploited the approach of action selection, due to the seminal results from classical reinforcement learning experiments. The role of reward and its relation to impulsivity (multi-dimensional construct) and compulsivity (repetitive and habitual behaviours) have been of focus due to their direct relevance in addiction and compulsive disorders. This paved the way for theories such as imbalance in goal-directed and habit behaviours and identification of disorder-specific deficits, such as set-shifting in OCD, and craving and reward-anticipation in addiction.

The emphasis on action selection based approach is understandable, as it provides a tractable method to study behaviour in a principled and objective fashion, with a potential to identify biomarkers. But it fails to capture the criticality of elements viz. emotion, mood, and motivation unique to human decision making. The key role of these elements is evident in conditions such as depression, anxiety and mood-disorders where there is a causal relationship between the ‘neuronal’ state and behaviour. Recognizing this relationship, innovative frameworks such as the somatic marker hypothesis have been proposed, which highlight the role of emotion in human decision making. However, emotion is a multi-faceted construct that does not lend itself to an easy treatment either in terms of computational modeling or experimental neurobiology.

In this Research Topic, we welcome theoretical and experimental studies that apply ‘reward or utility maximization and action-selection’ framework to psychiatric conditions such as impulsive (e.g. gambling, addiction), mood and anxiety, and compulsive disorders. Novel approaches that expand this framework and incorporate constructs such as emotion, effort, and motivation are of special focus.

The call is open but not restricted to:
● Novel experimental studies/paradigms that investigate effort, motivation, mood, and anxiety in reward-utility framework in health and disease such as OCD, depression, anxiety and mood disorders.
● Computational models that utilise either data-driven, simulation based approaches, and reinforcement learning models where the abstract factors such as effort, motivation, mood, and anxiety are represented in terms of value or utility.
● Research that focuses on studying the causal relationship between decision making and effort, motivation, mood, and anxiety
● Translation research such as pharmacological interventions where insights gained could potentially help design novel treatment/ diagnostic methods.

Image by Stmool on Shutterstock

Keywords: Psychiatric disorders, action selection, computational modelling, reinforcement learning, motivation and effort

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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