ArticleNPJ schizophrenia2021
Relationship of ventral striatum activation during effort discounting to clinical amotivation severity in schizophrenia.
Article in NPJ schizophrenia, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Predictors of successful anti-inflammatory drug trials in patients with schizophrenia: A meta-regression and critical commentary.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2023Pooled it
- Multimodal EEG-MRI Neuroimaging in Schizophrenia-A Systematic and Mechanistic Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Computational phenotypes underlying effort-based decision-making and negative symptoms in a transdiagnostic severe mental illness sample.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Temporal dynamics of effort discounting: The roles of cognitive load and depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Commentary on Ziermans T. et al. "Call to Action on Social Cognition Measures".Schizophrenia research. Cognition · 2026Article
- Exaggerated frontoparietal control over cognitive effort-based decision-making in young women with anorexia nervosa.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Probabalistic reinforcement learning impairments predict negative symptom severity and risk for conversion in youth at clinical high-risk for psychosis.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Social Effort Discounting Reveals Domain-General and Social-Specific Motivation Components.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2025Article
- Neurobiological foundations and clinical relevance of effort-based decision-making.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Review
- Evaluation of a new intrinsic and extrinsic motivation scale in youth with psychosis spectrum symptoms.Comprehensive psychiatry · 2023Article
- Activation of Internal Correctness Monitoring Circuitry in Youths With Psychosis Spectrum Symptoms.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Article
- Construction of a computerized adaptive test (CAT-CCNB) for efficient neurocognitive and clinical psychopathology assessment.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2023Article
- Learned industriousness as a translational mechanism in anorexia nervosa.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Article
- Prenatal dexamethasone exposure alters effort decision making and triggers nucleus accumbens and anterior cingulate cortex functional changes in male rats.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Motivational deficits play a central role in disability due to negative symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ), but limited pathophysiological understanding impedes critically needed therapeutic development. We applied an fMRI Effort Discounting Task (EDT) that quantifies motivation using a neuroeconomic decision-making approach, capturing the degree to which effort requirements produce reductions in the subjective value (SV) of monetary reward. An analyzed sample of 21 individuals with SZ and 23 group-matched controls performed the EDT during fMRI. We hypothesized that ventral striatum (VS) as well as extended brain motivation circuitry would encode SV, integrating reward and effort costs. We also hypothesized that VS hypoactivation during EDT decisions would demonstrate a dimensional relationship with clinical amotivation severity, reflecting greater suppression by effort costs. As hypothesized, VS as well as a broader cortico-limbic network were activated during the EDT and this activation correlated positively with SV. In SZ, activation to task decisions was reduced selectively in VS. Greater VS reductions correlated with more severe clinical amotivation in SZ and across all participants. However, these diagnosis and amotivation effects could not be explained by the response to parametric variation in reward, effort, or model-based SV. Our findings demonstrate that VS hypofunction in schizophrenia is manifested during effort-based decisions and reflects dimensional motivation impairment. Dysfunction of VS impacting effort-based decision-making can provide a target for biomarker development to guide novel efforts to assess and treat disabling amotivation.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.