denOuden-dissociable-2013
Chamberlain et al. 2006 showed that citalopram leads people to shift away more frequently from aversive stimuli Cools et al. 2008 showed that depleting serotonin improves prediction of punishment but not reward Boulougouris et al. 2008, 2010 showed that antagonizing 2A and 2C receptors affected errors in reversal learning Clarke et al. 2007 showed that serotonin depletion reduced performance in reversal learning
den Ouden et al. assessed the reversal learning abilities of humans grouped by genetic mutations in serotonin and dopamine based genes.
The task required the subject to select one of two stimuli. At first, stimulus A is rewarded 70% of the time and punished 30%. Later this is switched around.
TODO: I really ought to learn more about genetics
The following results appear not to have been corrected for the number of comparisons performed. I think this is ok for the first (p < 0.005), but is a problem for the second (p < 0.05).
Those with an L'/L' mutation in the SERT region were more likely to shift away from the old strategy on a loss (lose-shift) Those with a 9R/9R mutation in DAT1 region were likely to persevere through more errors post-reversal.
There was no significant difference in the tendency to stay on the old strategy after a win.