Key result
Late circadian rhythm and time-of-testing interact to impair effort-based decision-making, producing effects parallel to those seen in neuropsychiatric syndromes like apathy and anhedonia.
Why the study?
Disrupted effort-based decision-making may represent a shared neurobiological underpinning of motivational deficits across neuropsychiatric disorders, but the role and confounding effect of circadian rhythms remained to be clarified.
Does circadian rhythm and time-of-testing affect effort-based decision-making?
Observational (n=994)
Does circadian rhythm and time-of-testing affect effort-based decision-making?
Circadian rhythm and time-of-testing significantly impact effort-based decision-making, highlighting the need to account for these variables in computational psychiatry.
Circadian timing may bias effort-based testing; leaves open whether rhythm standardization refines apathy models in computational psychiatry.
Motivational deficits are common in several brain disorders, and motivational syndromes like apathy and anhedonia predict worse outcomes. Disrupted effort-based decision-making may represent a neurobiological underpinning of motivational deficits, shared across neuropsychiatric disorders. We measured effort-based decision-making in 994 participants using a gamified online task, combined with computational modelling, and validated offline for test–retest reliability. In two pre-registered studies, we first replicated studies linking impaired effort-based decision-making to neuropsychiatric syndromes, taking both a transdiagnostic and a diagnostic-criteria approach. Next, testing participants with early and late circadian rhythms in the morning and evening, we find circadian rhythm interacts with time-of-testing to produce parallel effects on effort-based decision-making. Circadian rhythm may be an important variable in computational psychiatry, decreasing reliability or distorting results when left unaccounted for. Disentangling effects of neuropsychiatric syndromes and circadian rhythm on effort-based decision-making will be essential to understand motivational pathologies and to develop tailored clinical interventions.
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Mehrhof et al. (2025) conducted an observational in Motivational deficits (apathy, anhedonia) (n=994). Apathy, anhedonia, and late circadian rhythm vs. Early circadian rhythm was evaluated on Effort-based decision-making. Late circadian rhythm and time-of-testing interact to impair effort-based decision-making, producing effects parallel to those seen in neuropsychiatric syndromes like apathy and anhedonia.
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