BMI Seminar // Apathy in patients with schizophrenia - an impairment of goal-directed behavior

Apathy is a common and debilitating negative symptom of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. While originally defined as an impairment of motivation, apathy has recently been defined as a quantitative reduction of goal-directed behavior. Treatment options for apathy remain very limited, in particular for patients with schizophrenia.
In this talk I will present a research program that aims to develop a model for apathy that spans the phenomenological, process and neurobiological levels of description. Particular attention will be paid to recent research that has identified dysfunctions in specific processes underlying goal-directed behavior, including the generation of options for action, effort-based decision-making and reinforcement learning.  On the neural level the most consistent association with apathy has been found for ventral striatal hypoactivation during the anticipation of rewards, but recent studies suggest a more general impairment of the coding of reward information. Overall, these findings are beginning to suggest potential targets for biological and psychological treatment approaches.