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Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments

Affective bias, the tendency to differentially prioritise the processing of negative relative to positive events, is commonly observed in clinical and non-clinical populations. However, why such biases develop is not known. Using a computational framework, we investigated whether affective biases ma...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pulcu, Erdem, Browning, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5633345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28976304
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27879
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author Pulcu, Erdem
Browning, Michael
author_facet Pulcu, Erdem
Browning, Michael
author_sort Pulcu, Erdem
collection PubMed
description Affective bias, the tendency to differentially prioritise the processing of negative relative to positive events, is commonly observed in clinical and non-clinical populations. However, why such biases develop is not known. Using a computational framework, we investigated whether affective biases may reflect individuals’ estimates of the information content of negative relative to positive events. During a reinforcement learning task, the information content of positive and negative outcomes was manipulated independently by varying the volatility of their occurrence. Human participants altered the learning rates used for the outcomes selectively, preferentially learning from the most informative. This behaviour was associated with activity of the central norepinephrine system, estimated using pupilometry, for loss outcomes. Humans maintain independent estimates of the information content of distinct positive and negative outcomes which may bias their processing of affective events. Normalising affective biases using computationally inspired interventions may represent a novel approach to treatment development.
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spelling pubmed-56333452017-10-11 Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments Pulcu, Erdem Browning, Michael eLife Neuroscience Affective bias, the tendency to differentially prioritise the processing of negative relative to positive events, is commonly observed in clinical and non-clinical populations. However, why such biases develop is not known. Using a computational framework, we investigated whether affective biases may reflect individuals’ estimates of the information content of negative relative to positive events. During a reinforcement learning task, the information content of positive and negative outcomes was manipulated independently by varying the volatility of their occurrence. Human participants altered the learning rates used for the outcomes selectively, preferentially learning from the most informative. This behaviour was associated with activity of the central norepinephrine system, estimated using pupilometry, for loss outcomes. Humans maintain independent estimates of the information content of distinct positive and negative outcomes which may bias their processing of affective events. Normalising affective biases using computationally inspired interventions may represent a novel approach to treatment development. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5633345/ /pubmed/28976304 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27879 Text en © 2017, Pulcu et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Pulcu, Erdem
Browning, Michael
Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title_full Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title_fullStr Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title_full_unstemmed Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title_short Affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
title_sort affective bias as a rational response to the statistics of rewards and punishments
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5633345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28976304
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27879
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