ArticleBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging2025
Computational Phenotyping of Effort-Based Decision Making in Unmedicated Adults With Remitted Depression.
Article in Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of reward processing deficits in repetitive negative thinking: Implications for depression.Psychological medicine · 2026Trial
- Effort, timing and choice: a refined rodent effort choice task with excellent sensitivity to dopamine modulators.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Nociceptin orphanin F/Q Pathways are dysregulated by stress and modulate reward responsiveness and motivated behavior across species.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Understanding Effort-Cost Decision-Making Mechanisms in Mood and Psychotic Disorders: A Computational Modeling Approach Across Physical and Cognitive Effort Paradigms.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Effort and substance use: differentiating tobacco use through reinforcement learning of effort based decision making.Journal of computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- HSSM: A Widely Applicable Toolbox for Hierarchical Bayesian Neurocognitive Modeling.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Efficient Inference in First Passage Time Models.Statistics and computing · 2026Article
- Examining effects of effort and reward magnitude on effort-cost decision-making in people with major depressive disorder.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Ketamine Improves Anhedonic Phenotypes Across Species: Translational Evidence From the Probabilistic Reward Task.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Environmental uncertainty shapes human effort learning.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Computational simulation of intervention targets: elucidating coping style mechanisms in anxiety and depressive symptom networks in community populations.BMC psychology · 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
- Effort and Substance Use: Differentiating Tobacco Use Through Reinforcement Learning of Effort Based Decision Making.Research square · 2026Article
- A computational approach to understanding effort-based decision-making in depression.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- A computational approach to understanding effort-based decision-making in depression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
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11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundReduced motivation is a core feature of major depressive disorder (MDD). Yet, the extent to which this deficit persists in remitted MDD (rMDD) remains unclear. Here, we examined effort-based decision making as one aspect of amotivation in rMDD using computational phenotyping to characterize decision-making processes and strategies.
methodsUnmedicated adults with rMDD (n = 40) and healthy control (HC) participants (n = 68) completed the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task. Repeated-measures analysis of variance and computational modeling-including hierarchical drift diffusion modeling and subjective value modeling-were applied to quantify decision-making dynamics in effort allocation across different reward magnitudes and probabilities.
resultsRelative to HC participants, participants with rMDD made overall fewer hard task choices, with an attenuated effect when accounting for anhedonia. However, specific to high reward, high probability conditions, participants with rMDD chose to expend effort more often than HC participants. This was supported by the drift diffusion model results revealing that participants with rMDD showed a drift rate biased toward selecting the easy task, counteracted by heightened influence of reward probability and magnitude. Probed with the subjective value model, this was not driven by group differences in decision strategies with respect to magnitude and probability information use.
conclusionsCollectively, these findings suggest that while individuals with rMDD exhibit persistent motivational deficits, they retain a heightened sensitivity to high-value rewards, requiring more substantial or certain rewards to engage in effortful tasks. This pattern may reflect impairments in reward processing and effort-cost computations, contributing to motivational dysfunction. Targeting reward sensitivity and effort allocation could be valuable for interventions aimed at preventing MDD relapse.
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