Doro­ta Frydecka

Implic­it and explic­it learn­ing in psy­chot­ic disorders

Abstract

Humans learn how to behave both through rules and instruc­tions (explic­it learn­ing) as well as through envi­ron­men­tal expe­ri­ences (implic­it learn­ing). It has been shown that instruc­tions can pow­er­ful­ly con­trol people’s choic­es, often lead­ing to a con­fir­ma­tion bias. Dif­fi­cul­ty to flex­i­bly and ade­quate­ly adapt to envi­ron­ment con­di­tions due to deficits in moti­va­tion and learn­ing are con­sid­ered to be core neg­a­tive symp­toms domain of psy­chot­ic disorders. 

Giv­en the com­plex­i­ty of neur­al cir­cuits involved in rein­force­ment and instruc­tion-based learn­ing, it becomes dif­fi­cult to cap­ture the pos­si­ble inter­ac­tions of these cir­cuits, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how they are dis­rupt­ed in schiz­o­phre­nia. In order to explore rein­force­ment learn­ing and con­fir­ma­tion bias both in schiz­o­phre­nia patients and in healthy con­trols, we employed Prob­a­bilis­tic Selec­tion Task (PST) and Instruct­ed Ver­sion of Prob­a­bilis­tic Selec­tion Task (IPST).

The data was ana­lyzed com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­els tak­ing under account inter­ac­tions between pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) respon­si­ble for explic­it learn­ing and basal gan­glia (BG) play­ing main­ly role in implic­it learn­ing. This approach allows to assess the rel­e­vance of dif­fer­ent neur­al cir­cuits in psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders in com­par­i­son to healthy con­trols and to cap­ture the essence of the pro­posed mech­a­nisms of cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing based on behav­ioral data of the par­tic­i­pants with respect to their symp­to­ma­tol­ogy and genet­ic under­pin­nings of PFC-BG system.

Biog­ra­phy

Prof. Doro­ta Fry­dec­ka is med­ical doc­tor with spe­cial­iza­tion in adult psy­chi­a­try, psy­chol­o­gist and com­put­er sci­en­tist. She works at the Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try in Wro­claw Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty and pre­vi­ous­ly also in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy in Wro­claw Uni­ver­si­ty and Depart­ment of Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy in High­er School of Social Psychology. 

She was a PI in sev­er­al research projects on the genet­ic basis of psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders in rela­tion to immune sys­tem, cog­ni­tive func­tions, neur­al net­work mod­el­ing and com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ing (award­ed by Min­istry of Sci­ence and High­er Edu­ca­tion, Foun­da­tion of Pol­ish Sci­ence, Nation­al Sci­ence Cen­ter). She got addi­tion­al train­ing in the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try (King’s Col­lege Lon­don), Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try (Charite Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin) and Depart­ments of Radi­ol­o­gy, Neu­ro­science, and Psy­chol­o­gy (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty). She has received numer­ous nation­al (Wro­claw Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty Dean’s awards, Foun­da­tion for Pol­ish Sci­ence awards) and inter­na­tion­al awards (Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion award, Euro­pean Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion award, Euro­pean Col­lege of Neu­ropsy­chophar­ma­col­o­gy award). 

She was the Edi­tor of the research top­ic “Cog­ni­tive Func­tion in Schiz­o­phre­nia: Genet­ic, Psy­chophar­ma­co­log­i­cal, Com­pu­ta­tion­al, Neur­al, and Behav­ioral Stud­ies” for Fron­tiers in Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science jour­nal and research top­ic “Endophe­no­types for schiz­o­phre­nia and mood dis­or­ders: impli­ca­tions from genet­ic, bio­chem­i­cal, cog­ni­tive, behav­ioral and neu­roimag­ing stud­ies” for Fron­tiers in Psy­chi­a­try jour­nal. She was the board mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board ECPC — ini­tia­tive of the Euro­pean Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion – Task Force on Research.