Disorders of compulsivity: a common bias towards learning habits

By Valerie Voon, K. Derbyshire, Chistian Rück, Michael A. Irvine, Yulia Worbe, Jesper Enander, Liana R. N. Schreiber, Claire M. Gillan, N. Fineberg, Barbara J. Sahakian and 7 more. Molecular Psychiatry, 2014

612 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Why do we repeat choices that we know are bad for us? Decision making is characterized by the parallel engagement of two distinct systems, goal-directed and habitual, thought to arise from two computational learning mechanisms, model-based and model-free. The habitual system is a candidate source of pathological fixedness. Using a decision task that measures the contribution to learning of either mechanism, we show a bias towards model-free (habit) acquisition in disorders involving both natural (binge eating) and artificial (methamphetamine) rewards, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This favoring of model-free learning may underlie the repetitive behaviors that ultimately dominate in these disorders. Further, we show that the habit formation bias is associated with lower gray matter volumes in caudate and medial orbitofrontal cortex. Our findings suggest that the dysfunction in a common neurocomputational mechanism may underlie diverse disorders involving compulsion.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4b3620c9683bc97fe9cb5bb655769fa9d0feef89

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Citations in the corpus

Model-Based Reasoning in Humans Becomes Automatic with Training (2015, background): “For example, over-reliance on habits could lead to inflexible decision-making in addiction [4] and compulsion [5].”
Computational psychiatry as a bridge from neuroscience to clinical applications (2016, background): “A similar argument has been made for a shift toward MF actions in OCD based on the idea that compulsions in OCD and compulsive drug use share some features 117,119,120 .”
Psychology of Habit. (2016, background): “For example, participants who were obese, obsessive-compulsive, or dependent on methamphetamine (abstinent at test) showed compromised goal-directed learning at a decision-making task, along with a maladaptive reliance on habits (Voon et al. 2015).”
Model-based learning protects against forming habits (2015, background): “As outlined in the introduction, these processes share a dependence on the caudate nucleus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) (Daw et al., 2011; de Wit et al., 2009; de Wit et al., 2012; Gillan, Apergis-Schoute, et al., 2014; Valentin et al., 2007; Voon et al., 2014; Yin et al., 2005).”