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Anne Beck

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10 papers

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YNICL Journal 2024 Journal Article

Impaired flexible reward learning in ADHD patients is associated with blunted reinforcement sensitivity and neural signals in ventral striatum and parietal cortex

Hans-Christoph Aster
Maria Waltmann
Anika Busch
Marcel Romanos
Matthias Gamer
Betteke Maria van Noort
Anne Beck
Viola Kappel

Reward-based learning and decision-making are prime candidates to understand symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, only limited evidence is available regarding the neurocomputational underpinnings of the alterations seen in ADHD. This concerns flexible behavioral adaption in dynamically changing environments, which is challenging for individuals with ADHD. One previous study points to elevated choice switching in adolescent ADHD, which was accompanied by disrupted learning signals in medial prefrontal cortex. Here, we investigated young adults with ADHD (n = 17) as compared to age- and sex-matched controls (n = 17) using a probabilistic reversal learning experiment during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The task requires continuous learning to guide flexible behavioral adaptation to changing reward contingencies. To disentangle the neurocomputational underpinnings of the behavioral data, we used reinforcement learning (RL) models, which informed the analysis of fMRI data. ADHD patients performed worse than controls particularly in trials before reversals, i.e., when reward contingencies were stable. This pattern resulted from 'noisy' choice switching regardless of previous feedback. RL modelling showed decreased reinforcement sensitivity and enhanced learning rates for negative feedback in ADHD patients. At the neural level, this was reflected in a diminished representation of choice probability in the left posterior parietal cortex in ADHD. Moreover, modelling showed a marginal reduction of learning about the unchosen option, which was paralleled by a marginal reduction in learning signals incorporating the unchosen option in the left ventral striatum. Taken together, we show that impaired flexible behavior in ADHD is due to excessive choice switching ('hyper-flexibility'), which can be detrimental or beneficial depending on the learning environment. Computationally, this resulted from blunted sensitivity to reinforcement of which we detected neural correlates in the attention-control network, specifically in the parietal cortex. These neurocomputational findings remain preliminary due to the relatively small sample size.

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YNICL Journal 2023 Journal Article

Uncontrolled eating and sensation-seeking partially explain the prediction of future binge drinking from adolescent brain structure

Roshan Prakash Rane
Milena Philomena Maria Musial
Anne Beck
Michael Rapp
Florian Schlagenhauf
Tobias Banaschewski
Arun L.W. Bokde
Marie-Laure Paillère Martinot

Binge drinking behavior in early adulthood can be predicted from brain structure during early adolescence with an accuracy of above 70%. We investigated whether this accurate prospective prediction of alcohol misuse behavior can be explained by psychometric variables such as personality traits or mental health comorbidities in a data-driven approach. We analyzed a subset of adolescents who did not have any prior binge drinking experience at age 14 (IMAGEN dataset, n = 555, 52.61% female). Participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging at age 14, binge drinking assessments at ages 14 and 22, and psychometric questionnaire assessments at ages 14 and 22. We derived structural brain features from T1-weighted magnetic resonance and diffusion tensor imaging. Using Machine Learning (ML), we predicted binge drinking (age 22) from brain structure (age 14) and used counterbalancing with oversampling to systematically control for 110 + variables from a wide range of social, personality, and other psychometric characteristics potentially associated with binge drinking. We evaluated if controlling for any variable resulted in a significant reduction in ML prediction accuracy. Sensation-seeking (-13.98 ± 1.68%), assessed via the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale at age 14, and uncontrolled eating (-13.98 ± 3.28%), assessed via the Three-Factor-Eating-Questionnaire at age 22, led to significant reductions in mean balanced prediction accuracy upon controlling for them. Thus, sensation-seeking and binge eating could partially explain the prediction of future binge drinking from adolescent brain structure. Our findings suggest that binge drinking and binge eating at age 22 share common neurobiological precursors discovered by the ML model. These neurobiological precursors seem to be associated with sensation-seeking at age 14. Our results facilitate early detection of increased risk for binge drinking and inform future clinical research in trans-diagnostic prevention approaches for adolescent alcohol misuse.

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YNICL Journal 2017 Journal Article

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex contributes to the impaired behavioral adaptation in alcohol dependence

Sinem Balta Beylergil
Anne Beck
Lorenz Deserno
Robert C. Lorenz
Michael A. Rapp
Florian Schlagenhauf
Andreas Heinz
Klaus Obermayer

Substance-dependent individuals often lack the ability to adjust decisions flexibly in response to the changes in reward contingencies. Prediction errors (PEs) are thought to mediate flexible decision-making by updating the reward values associated with available actions. In this study, we explored whether the neurobiological correlates of PEs are altered in alcohol dependence. Behavioral, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were simultaneously acquired from 34 abstinent alcohol-dependent patients (ADP) and 26 healthy controls (HC) during a probabilistic reward-guided decision-making task with dynamically changing reinforcement contingencies. A hierarchical Bayesian inference method was used to fit and compare learning models with different assumptions about the amount of task-related information subjects may have inferred during the experiment. Here, we observed that the best-fitting model was a modified Rescorla-Wagner type model, the "double-update" model, which assumes that subjects infer the knowledge that reward contingencies are anti-correlated, and integrate both actual and hypothetical outcomes into their decisions. Moreover, comparison of the best-fitting model's parameters showed that ADP were less sensitive to punishments compared to HC. Hence, decisions of ADP after punishments were loosely coupled with the expected reward values assigned to them. A correlation analysis between the model-generated PEs and the fMRI data revealed a reduced association between these PEs and the BOLD activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of ADP. A hemispheric asymmetry was observed in the DLPFC when positive and negative PE signals were analyzed separately. The right DLPFC activity in ADP showed a reduced correlation with positive PEs. On the other hand, ADP, particularly the patients with high dependence severity, recruited the left DLPFC to a lesser extent than HC for processing negative PE signals. These results suggest that the DLPFC, which has been linked to adaptive control of action selection, may play an important role in cognitive inflexibility observed in alcohol dependence when reinforcement contingencies change. Particularly, the left DLPFC may contribute to this impaired behavioral adaptation, possibly by impeding the extinction of the actions that no longer lead to a reward.

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YNIMG Journal 2017 Journal Article

Targeted intervention: Computational approaches to elucidate and predict relapse in alcoholism

Andreas Heinz
Lorenz Deserno
Ulrich S. Zimmermann
Michael N. Smolka
Anne Beck
Florian Schlagenhauf

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) and addiction in general is characterized by failures of choice resulting in repeated drug intake despite severe negative consequences. Behavioral change is hard to accomplish and relapse after detoxification is common and can be promoted by consumption of small amounts of alcohol as well as exposure to alcohol-associated cues or stress. While those environmental factors contributing to relapse have long been identified, the underlying psychological and neurobiological mechanism on which those factors act are to date incompletely understood. Based on the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, animal experiments showed that drug, cue and stress exposure affect Pavlovian and instrumental learning processes, which can increase salience of drug cues and promote habitual drug intake. In humans, computational approaches can help to quantify changes in key learning mechanisms during the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence, e. g. by using sequential decision making in combination with computational modeling to elucidate individual differences in model-free versus more complex, model-based learning strategies and their neurobiological correlates such as prediction error signaling in fronto-striatal circuits. Computational models can also help to explain how alcohol-associated cues trigger relapse: mechanisms such as Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer can quantify to which degree Pavlovian conditioned stimuli can facilitate approach behavior including alcohol seeking and intake. By using generative models of behavioral and neural data, computational approaches can help to quantify individual differences in psychophysiological mechanisms that underlie the development and maintenance of AUD and thus promote targeted intervention.

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YNIMG Journal 2015 Journal Article

Subjective illusion of control modulates striatal reward anticipation in adolescence

Robert C. Lorenz
Tobias Gleich
Simone Kühn
Lydia Pöhland
Patricia Pelz
Torsten Wüstenberg
Diana Raufelder
Andreas Heinz

The perception of control over the environment constitutes a fundamental biological adaptive mechanism, especially during development. Previous studies comparing an active choice condition with a passive no-choice condition showed that the neural basis of this mechanism is associated with increased activity within the striatum and the prefrontal cortex. In the current study, we aimed to investigate whether subjective belief of control in an uncertain gambling situation induces elevated activation in a cortico-striatal network. We investigated 79 adolescents (age range: 13–16years) during reward anticipation with a slot machine task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We assessed post-experimentally whether the participants experienced a subjective illusion of control on winning or losing in this task that was objectively not given. Nineteen adolescents experienced an illusion of control during slot machine gambling. This illusion of control group showed an increased neural activity during reward anticipation within a cortico-striatal network including ventral striatum (VS) as well as right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) relative to the group reporting no illusion of control. The rIFG activity was inversely associated with impulsivity in the no illusion of control group. The subjective belief about control led to an elevated ventral striatal activity, which is known to be involved in the processing of reward. This finding strengthens the notion that subjectively perceived control, not necessarily the objective presence of control, affects striatal reward-related processing.

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YNIMG Journal 2014 Journal Article

Striatal dysfunction during reversal learning in unmedicated schizophrenia patients

Florian Schlagenhauf
Quentin J.M. Huys
Lorenz Deserno
Michael A. Rapp
Anne Beck
Hans-Joachim Heinze
Ray Dolan
Andreas Heinz

Subjects with schizophrenia are impaired at reinforcement-driven reversal learning from as early as their first episode. The neurobiological basis of this deficit is unknown. We obtained behavioral and fMRI data in 24 unmedicated, primarily first episode, schizophrenia patients and 24 age-, IQ- and gender-matched healthy controls during a reversal learning task. We supplemented our fMRI analysis, focusing on learning from prediction errors, with detailed computational modeling to probe task solving strategy including an ability to deploy an internal goal directed model of the task. Patients displayed reduced functional activation in the ventral striatum (VS) elicited by prediction errors. However, modeling task performance revealed that a subgroup did not adjust their behavior according to an accurate internal model of the task structure, and these were also the more severely psychotic patients. In patients who could adapt their behavior, as well as in controls, task solving was best described by cognitive strategies according to a Hidden Markov Model. When we compared patients and controls who acted according to this strategy, patients still displayed a significant reduction in VS activation elicited by informative errors that precede salient changes of behavior (reversals). Thus, our study shows that VS dysfunction in schizophrenia patients during reward-related reversal learning remains a core deficit even when controlling for task solving strategies. This result highlights VS dysfunction is tightly linked to a reward-related reversal learning deficit in early, unmedicated schizophrenia patients.

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RLDM Conference 2013 Conference Abstract

Modeling of Cognitive Impairment in Reversal Learning after Chronic Alcohol Use

Sinem Balta Beylergil
Lorenz Deserno
Anne Beck
Klaus Obermayer
Andreas Heinz

Reversal learning paradigm, where subjects must learn to respond to formerly irrelevant stimulus- reward pairing, has been used in many studies to explore the adverse effects of addiction on decision making and learning. However, the focus has been more on error pattern analyses and the underlying computational principles have not been analyzed in depth as far as alcohol addiction is concerned. In this study, we used behavioral computational modeling to shed light on the impaired mechanisms of decision making in alcohol addiction. 35 abstinent alcohol-dependent and 26 control subjects (age, sex and IQ matched) performed a probabilistic reversal task. We considered three computational learning models: (1) a simple reinforcement learning (RL) model, (2) a variant of the RL model and (3) a Hidden Markov model (HMM). Additionally, each model had two variants: the first with equal and the second with unequal free parameters assigned to positive and negative outcomes. The results showed that AG scores worse overall than CG and needed more trials to reach the reversal criteria. At the time of reversals, AG shifted their response later than CG, showing difficulty in inhibitory control. The equally best fitting models (2) and (3) both illustrated that subjects generally assigned lower values to rewards than punishments. Furthermore, according to the model (2), AG had significantly lower degree of aversion to punishments. Likewise, according to the model (3), AG expected punishments from incorrect responses less than CG. Our results, showed impaired salience attribution, difficulties in suppression of prepotent responses and heightened perseveration. These suggest that ”punishment” secondary to an incorrect response might not yield enough salience to evoke attention and/or working memory in alcohol addiction to create the necessary shift in the response and this might underpin the perseveration in reward-based learning.

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YNIMG Journal 2008 Journal Article

Catechol-O-methyltransferase val158met genotype influences neural processing of reward anticipation

Katharina Schmack
Florian Schlagenhauf
Philipp Sterzer
Jana Wrase
Anne Beck
Theresa Dembler
Peter Kalus
Imke Puls

Reward processing depends critically on dopaminergic neurotransmission in the ventral striatum. The common polymorphism val158met of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) accounts for significant interindividual variations in dopamine (DA) degradation, although the direct effect of COMT on striatal DA might be limited. Using fMRI we assessed the influence of COMT val158met genotype on brain activations elicited by the anticipation of monetary gains and losses in forty-four healthy volunteers. We found that the met158 allele, which is presumably linked to higher synaptic DA levels, was associated with higher responses in ventral striatum to loss incentives. There was a linear relationship between the number of met158 alleles and ventral striatal activity. Furthermore, we observed a similar gene-dose effect in the anterior temporal cortex, a region that has been linked to the coupling of sensory information with emotional contents. Temporal cortex also showed enhanced connectivity to the ventral striatum during the processing of incentive stimuli. Increased ventral striatal reactivity to loss incentives related to the met158 allele might contribute to the observed association of the met158 allele to higher loss aversion behaviour. Current evidence and our results are compatible with an interpretation that construes this effect of COMT genotype on striatal reactivity as a result of a cortico-striatal interaction.

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YNIMG Journal 2007 Journal Article

Different neural systems adjust motor behavior in response to reward and punishment

Jana Wrase
Thorsten Kahnt
Florian Schlagenhauf
Anne Beck
Michael X. Cohen
Brian Knutson
Andreas Heinz

Individuals use the outcomes of their actions to adjust future behavior. However, it remains unclear whether the same neural circuits are used to adjust behavior due to rewarding and punishing outcomes. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a reward-providing reaction time task to investigate the adaptation of a simple motor response following four different outcomes (delivery versus omission and monetary gain versus loss). We found that activation in the thalamus and insula predicted adjustments of motor responses due to outcomes that were cued and delivered, whereas activation in the ventral striatum predicted such adjustments when outcomes were cued but omitted. Further, activation of OFC predicted improvement after all punishing outcomes, independent of whether they were omitted rewards or delivered punishments. Finally, we found that activity in anterior cingulate predicted adjustment after delivered punishments and activity in dorsal striatum predicted adaptation after delivered rewards. Our results provide evidence that different but somewhat overlapping circuits mediate the same behavioral adaptation when it is driven by different incentive outcomes.

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YNIMG Journal 2007 Journal Article

Dysfunction of reward processing correlates with alcohol craving in detoxified alcoholics

Jana Wrase
Florian Schlagenhauf
Thorsten Kienast
Torsten Wüstenberg
Felix Bermpohl
Thorsten Kahnt
Anne Beck
Andreas Ströhle

Objective Alcohol dependence may be associated with dysfunction of mesolimbic circuitry, such that anticipation of nonalcoholic reward fails to activate the ventral striatum, while alcohol-associated cues continue to activate this region. This may lead alcoholics to crave the pharmacological effects of alcohol to a greater extent than other conventional rewards. The present study investigated neural mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Methods 16 detoxified male alcoholics and 16 age-matched healthy volunteers participated in two fMRI paradigms. In the first paradigm, alcohol-associated and affectively neutral pictures were presented, whereas in the second paradigm, a monetary incentive delay task (MID) was performed, in which brain activation during anticipation of monetary gain and loss was examined. For both paradigms, we assessed the association of alcohol craving with neural activation to incentive cues. Results Detoxified alcoholics showed reduced activation of the ventral striatum during anticipation of monetary gain relative to healthy controls, despite similar performance. However, alcoholics showed increased ventral striatal activation in response to alcohol-associated cues. Reduced activation in the ventral striatum during expectation of monetary reward, and increased activation during presentation of alcohol cues were correlated with alcohol craving in alcoholics, but not healthy controls. Conclusions These results suggest that mesolimbic activation in alcoholics is biased towards processing of alcohol cues. This might explain why alcoholics find it particularly difficult to focus on conventional reward cues and engage in alternative rewarding activities.

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