Impaired social decision making in patients with major depressive disorder

BMC Psychiatry

Zhe-Ning Liu³  Guo-Wei Wu³  Peng Wang³  Shu Li¹  Yuan Zhou¹  Yun Wang² 

[1] Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;Institute of Mental Health, Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, China

关键词: Fairness;    Decision making;    Major depressive disorder;    Ultimatum game;   

Others  :  1123821
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-14-18

 received in 2013-09-25, accepted in 2014-01-20,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Abnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it is unresolved whether MDD patients show abnormalities in decision making in a social interaction context, in which decisions have actual influences on both the self-interests of the decision makers per se and those of their partners.

Methods

Using a well-studied ultimatum game (UG), which is frequently used to investigate social interaction behavior, we examined whether MDD can be associated with abnormalities in social decision-making behavior by comparing the acceptance rates of MDD patients (N = 14) with those of normal controls (N = 19).

Results

The acceptance rates of the patients were lower than those of the normal controls. Additionally, unfair proposals were accepted at similar rates from computer partners and human partners in the MDD patients, unlike the acceptance rates in the normal controls, who were able to discriminatively treat unfair proposals from computer partners and human partners.

Conclusions

Depressed patients show abnormal decision-making behavior in a social interaction context. Several possible explanations, such as increased sensitivity to fairness, negative emotional state and disturbed affective cognition, have been proposed to account for the abnormal social decision-making behavior in patients with MDD. This aberrant social decision-making behavior may provide a new perspective in the search to find biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of MDD.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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