The Importance of Common Currency Tasks in Translational Psychiatry

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Common currency tasks are tasks that investigate the same phenomenon in different species. In this review, we discuss how to ensure the translational validity of common currency tasks, summarise their benefits, present recent research in this area and offer future directions and recommendations. RECENT FINDINGS: We discuss the strengths and limitations of three specific examples where common currency tasks have added to our understanding of psychiatric constructs—affective bias, reversal learning and goal-based decision making. SUMMARY: Overall, common currency tasks offer the potential to improve drug discovery in psychiatry. We recommend that researchers prioritise construct validity above face validity when designing common currency tasks and suggest that the evidence for construct validity is summarised in papers presenting research in this area.