ArticleScientific reports2018
Depression is associated with enhanced aversive Pavlovian control over instrumental behaviour.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Disrupted Dorsal Mid-Insula Activation During Interoception Across Psychiatric Disorders.The American journal of psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Positive affect treatment targets reward sensitivity: A randomized controlled trial.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2023Trial
- Reward and avoidance learning in the context of aversive environments and possible implications for depressive symptoms.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Early reduction in aversive Pavlovian bias as a mediator of anhedonia improvement during Behavioural Activation in realistic treatment settings.PLoS computational biology · 2026Observational
- Article
- Article
- Pavlovian bias is associated with symptom severity but not diagnostic status in individuals with both anxious and non-anxious depression.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Article
- Intertemporal Pavlovian biases and links with mental health in the general population.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Depression Levels Are Associated with Reduced Capacity to Learn to Actively Avoid Aversive Events in Young Adults.eNeuro · 2025Article
- Erasing "bad memories": reversing aberrant synaptic plasticity as therapy for neurological and psychiatric disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Pavlovian impatience: The anticipation of immediate rewards increases approach behaviour.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Pupil dilation reflects effortful action invigoration in overcoming aversive Pavlovian biases.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Compulsive avoidance in youths and adults with OCD: an aversive pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer study.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Emotional cues reduce Pavlovian interference in feedback-based go and nogo learning.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Focused stimulation of dorsal versus ventral subthalamic nucleus enhances action-outcome learning in patients with Parkinson's disease.Brain communications · 2024Article
- The neurocognitive role of working memory load when Pavlovian motivational control affects instrumental learning.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Modifying Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer by approach avoidance training in healthy subjects: a proof of concept study.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Sensitivity to intrinsic rewards is domain general and related to mental health.Nature. Mental health · 2023Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The dynamic modulation of instrumental behaviour by conditioned Pavlovian cues is an important process in decision-making. Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) are known to exhibit mood-congruent biases in information processing, which may occur due to Pavlovian influences, but this hypothesis has never been tested directly in an unmedicated sample. To address this we tested unmedicated MDD patients and healthy volunteers on a computerized Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) task designed to separately examine instrumental approach and withdrawal actions in the context of Pavlovian appetitive and aversive cues. This design allowed us to directly measure the degree to which Pavlovian cues influence instrumental responding. Depressed patients were profoundly influenced by aversive Pavlovian stimuli, to a significantly greater degree than healthy volunteers. This was the case for instrumental behaviour both in the approach condition (in which aversive Pavlovian cues inhibited 'go' responses), and in the withdrawal condition (in which aversive Pavlovian cues facilitated 'go' responses). Exaggerated aversive PIT provides a potential cognitive mechanism for biased emotion processing in major depression. This finding also has wider significance for the understanding of disrupted motivational processing in neuropsychiatric disorders.
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