Social cognitive deficits are a hallmark of schizophrenia and include impaired social cue perception,
mentalizing, and emotion regulation. Social cognitive deficits are related to functional disability and poor
outcome. However, little is known about social reward learning in schizophrenia. Failure to learn to social
feedback may critically impair learning of appropriate social interactions, and thus could be a significant
contributor to functional impairment in schizophrenia, and thus a possible novel target of intervention that may
advance treatment of this debilitating aspect of the illness. The overall objective of this application is to address
the gap in the literature regarding social reward learning in schizophrenia. The time is ripe to assess these
deficits in schizophrenia because basic neuroscience research over the last decade has identified neural
processes involved in social reward. For instance, key cortical-basal ganglia circuitry involved in non-social
reward learning also appears to be involved in social reward. Monetary reward learning has been extensively
studied in schizophrenia and may inform hypotheses about social reward learning since the same key brain
areas are involved in both types of reward. A number of studies, though not all, show impaired learning to
positive feedback, but relatively intact learning to negative monetary feedback in schizophrenia. The proposed
social reward learning studies may provide similar evidence of impaired learning to positive, but more intact
learning to negative, feedback which could contribute significantly to decreased social motivation and social
pleasure. It is also critical to determine whether decreased expected value, which involves structures such as
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and/or reward prediction error (RPE) learning, which involves
structures such as the striatum, underlie social reward learning deficits so as to inform potential treatment
pathways. Impaired monetary reward learning in schizophrenia is driven in part by decreased value of rewards
as seen in computational modeling and in decreased activation of vmPFC. Decreased striatal activation to
RPEs is also seen in some, but not all, studies and like behavioral results is observed with positive, but not
negative RPEs. Our central hypothesis is that the pattern of social learning deficits is an extension of more
general reward learning impairment in schizophrenia and that social reward learning deficits critically contribute
to deficits in social motivation and pleasure. There may also be addition impairments in schizophrenia more
specific to social reward learning, such as impaired activation of areas involved in social cognition (e.g.,
amydala). A probabilistic reward learning (PRL) task will be used to evaluate social reward learning from
negative and positive social feedback. Monetary reward learning will be used as a comparison to assess
specificity. The specific aims are to: 1) Assess whether people with schizophrenia show impaired learning
from social rewards; 2) Evaluate neural circuitry involved in social reward learning in schizophrenia; and 3)
Assess relationships between social reward learning and clinical symptoms and function in schizophrenia.