Search

Individuals with addictions often encounter environmental cues that may trigger repeated engagement in addictive behaviors despite adverse consequences. In substance use disorders, Pavlovian cues may influence instrumental behaviors (Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer or PIT), and dominant habitual control that is insensitive to outcome values may serve as a foundational mechanism in addiction development. Although existing research suggests learning associations play important roles in internet gaming disorder (IGD), the contributions of PIT effects, habitual control, and connections with behavior remain largely uninvestigated. The present study sought to examine specific transfer effects of monetary cues, general transfer effects of gaming-related cues, and habitual control over instrumental behaviors as reflected in devaluation sensitivity, probing their interrelations and associations with gaming behaviors. Forty-five adults with IGD and 42 adults with recreational game use (RGU) at baseline performed a PIT task with a devaluation procedure. Participants reported gaming behavior and addiction severity at baseline and a four-month follow-up. Results demonstrated (1) a greater specific transfer effect in the IGD group compared to the RGU group; (2) positive correlations between specific and general transfer effects in both groups; (3) specific transfer effects of Go behavior in the IGD group positively correlating with habitual control, and No-Go behavior in the RGU group negatively correlating with habitual control; (4) transfer effects and habitual control relating prospectively to participants' gaming phenotypes at the four-month follow-up. These findings offer early evidence linking Pavlovian and instrumental associations to the development of IGD and suggest potential targets for prevention and intervention strategies. • Understanding cue-triggered biases and habitual control over instrumental behavior in IGD remains insufficient. • Adapted PIT task including specific PIT of monetary and general PIT of gaming cues components, and an outcome devaluation. • Compared with RGU, IGD showed a higher specific PIT effect, and similar general PIT effects and habit control. • The association between specific PIT effects and habit control was reversed between the two groups. • Transfer effects and habitual control were related to participants' gaming phenotypes at the four-month follow-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A popular distinction in the human and animal learning literature is between deliberate (or willed) and habitual (or automatic) modes of control. Extensive evidence indicates that, after sufficient learning, living organisms develop behavioural habits that permit them saving computational resources. Furthermore, humans and other animals are able to transfer control from deliberate to habitual modes (and vice versa), trading off efficiently flexibility and parsimony – an ability that is currently unparalleled by artificial control systems. Here, we discuss a computational implementation of habit formation, and the transfer of control from deliberate to habitual modes (and vice versa) within Active Inference: a computational framework that merges aspects of cybernetic theory and of Bayesian inference. To model habit formation, we endow an Active Inference agent with a mechanism to "cache" (or memorize) policy probabilities from previous trials, and reuse them to skip – in part or in full – the inferential steps of deliberative processing. We exploit the fact that the relative quality of policies, conditioned upon hidden states, is constant over trials; provided that contingencies and prior preferences do not change. This means the only quantity that can change policy selection is the prior distribution over the initial state – where this prior is based upon the posterior beliefs from previous trials. Thus, an agent that caches the quality (or the probability) of policies can safely reuse cached values to save on cognitive and computational resources – unless contingencies change. Our simulations illustrate the computational benefits, but also the limits, of three caching schemes under Active Inference. They suggest that key aspects of habitual behaviour – such as perseveration – can be explained in terms of caching policy probabilities. Furthermore, they suggest that there may be many kinds (or stages) of habitual behaviour, each associated with a different caching scheme; for example, caching associated or not associated with contextual estimation. These schemes are more or less impervious to contextual and contingency changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In instrumental conditioning, there is a rather precise definition of goal-directed control, and therefore an acute boundary between it and the somewhat more amorphous category comprising its opposites. Here, we review this division in terms of the various distinctions that accompany it in the fields of reinforcement learning and cognitive architectures, considering issues such as declarative and procedural control, the effect of prior distributions over environments, the neural substrates involved, and the differing views about the relative rationality of the various forms of control. Our overall aim is to reconnect some presently far-flung relations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Acute stress is associated with a shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. This stress-induced preference for habitual behavior has been suggested as a potential mechanism by which binge eating disorder (BED) patients succumb to eating large amounts of high-caloric foods in an uncontrolled manner (i.e., binge episodes). While in healthy subjects the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior is subserved by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insular cortex, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior caudate nucleus, and posterior putamen, the brain mechanism that underlies this (possibly amplified) stress-induced behavioral shift in BED patients is currently unknown. In the current study, 76 participants (38 BED, 38 healthy controls (HCs)) learned six stimulus-response-outcome associations in a well-established instrumental learning task. Subsequently, three outcomes were selectively devalued, after which participants underwent either a stress induction procedure (Maastricht Acute Stress Test; MAST) or a no-stress control procedure. Next, the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior was assessed during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Findings show that the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior was associated with activity in the ACC, insula, and OFC in no-stress HCs. Although stress and BED did not modulate the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior, BED participants displayed a smaller difference in putamen activation between trials probing goal-directed and habitual behavior compared with HCs when using a ROI approach. We conclude that putamen activity differences between BED and HC could reflect changes in monitoring of response accuracy or reward value, albeit perhaps not sufficiently to induce a measurable shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. Future research could clarify potential boundary conditions of stress-induced shifts in instrumental behavior in BED patients. • Putamen activity differences in goal-directed action and habits was reduced in BED. • BED did not boost the shift in goal-directed to habitual responding. • Acute stress did not impact brain activity or behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]