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Stress diminishes outcome but enhances response representations during instrumental learning

Jacqueline Katharina Meier, Bernhard P. Staresina, Lars Schwabe
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.12.430935
Jacqueline Katharina Meier
1Department of Cognitive Psychology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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Bernhard P. Staresina
2School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
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Lars Schwabe
1Department of Cognitive Psychology, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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  • For correspondence: Lars.Schwabe@uni-hamburg.de
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Abstract

Stress may shift behavioural control from a goal-directed system that encodes action-outcome relationships to a habit system that learns stimulus-response associations. Although this shift to habits is highly relevant for stress-related psychopathologies, limitations of existing behavioural paradigms hindered previous research to answer the fundamental question of whether the stress-induced bias to habits is due to impaired goal-directed or enhanced habitual processing (or both). Here, we leveraged EEG-based multivariate pattern analysis to decode neural outcome representations, crucial for goal-directed control, and response representations, essential for habitual responding, during instrumental learning. We show that stress reduces outcome representations but enhances response representations, both of which were directly associated with a behavioural index of habitual responding. Further, changes in outcome and response representations were uncorrelated, suggesting that these may reflect distinct processes. Our findings indicate that habit behaviour under stress is the result of both enhanced habitual and diminished goal-directed processing.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted February 14, 2021.
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Stress diminishes outcome but enhances response representations during instrumental learning
Jacqueline Katharina Meier, Bernhard P. Staresina, Lars Schwabe
bioRxiv 2021.02.12.430935; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.12.430935
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Stress diminishes outcome but enhances response representations during instrumental learning
Jacqueline Katharina Meier, Bernhard P. Staresina, Lars Schwabe
bioRxiv 2021.02.12.430935; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.12.430935

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