The neural underpinnings of cognitive flexibility and their disruption in psychotic illness

“…of both activating executive control network (ECN) structures, in the service of goal-directed behavior, and suppressing activity in default mode network (DMN) structures that are most active when the brain is “idling” (Seeley et al., 2007, Sridharan et al., 2008, Menon and Uddin, 2010).”

“The Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara et al., 1994, Bechara et al., 1997) is a reinforcement learning paradigm that was designed to focus on punishment sensitivity, with early studies showing dramatic impairment in individuals with frontal lobe (Bechara et al., 1994) or amygdala (Bechara et al., 1999) lesions.”

“…of both activating executive control network (ECN) structures, in the service of goal-directed behavior, and suppressing activity in default mode network (DMN) structures that are most active when the brain is “idling” (Seeley et al., 2007, Sridharan et al., 2008, Menon and Uddin, 2010).”

“The Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara et al., 1994, Bechara et al., 1997) is a reinforcement learning paradigm that was designed to focus on punishment sensitivity, with early studies showing dramatic impairment in individuals with frontal lobe (Bechara et al., 1994) or amygdala (Bechara et al., 1999)…”

“…of both activating executive control network (ECN) structures, in the service of goal-directed behavior, and suppressing activity in default mode network (DMN) structures that are most active when the brain is “idling” (Seeley et al., 2007, Sridharan et al., 2008, Menon and Uddin, 2010).”

“…impairments in both the formation and overriding of prepotent responses could stem from working memory deficits (Gold et al., 1997, Glahn et al., 2000, Hartman et al., 2003), which are prevalent in schizophrenia (Heinrichs and Zakzanis, 1998, Lee and Park, 2005), but not specific to the condition.”

“In the context of probabilistic reversal learning tasks, individuals can achieve learning in multiple ways: by either integrating reward prediction errors in model-free way, or by inducing a rule in a model-based way (Daw et al., 2005, Chen et al., 2015, Costa et al., 2015).”

“Early studies revealed that patients with frontal lobe lesions frequently exhibited a characteristic behavior on the WCST: they showed particularly difficulty in shifting from one sorting criterion to another, in the face of negative feedback (Milner, 1963, Nelson, 1976, Stuss et al., 2000).”

“Studies of the role of dopamine transmission in reversal learning have focused on three sites: presynaptic dopamine transporters (DATs), post-synaptic dopamine receptors, and the catechol-Omethyltransferase (COMT) enzyme, which acts mainly to metabolize dopamine in the PFC (Egan et al., 2001).”

“A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript Barnett JH, Jones PB, Robbins TW, Muller U. Effects of the catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met polymorphism on executive function: a meta-analysis of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test in schizophrenia and healthy controls.”

“Given that most kinds of antipsychotic drugs occupy dopamine D2-type receptors and postsynaptic 5HT receptors, which are related to cognitive flexibility, it is reasonable to assume that antipsychotics are associated with cognitive flexibility (Waltz [52]).”

“These methods are based on reversal learning paradigms and involve adapting behavior when previously rewarded cues are reversed [13, 14].”

“…to mood disorders (major depressive disorder (Deveney and Deldin, 2006)), complex disorders (OCD (Gruner and Pittenger, 2017)), schizophrenia (Waltz, 2017), eating disorders (Tchanturia et al., 2004), substance use disorders (Verdejo-Garcia et al., 2015), as well as neurodegenerative…”

“Datasets were accessed through OpenNeuro (https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds005237 and https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds000030/versions/00016).”

“Resistance to trying a new blood monitoring method may reflect cognitive rigidity and therapeutic reliance on routine among people with schizophrenia (Mucci et al., 2020; Waltz, 2017).”