BNABrain and Neuroscience Advances2398-2128SAGE PublicationsSage UK: London, England10.1177/2398212822110225610.1177_23982128221102256Negative urgency as a driver for psychopathologyResearch PaperDissociating reward sensitivity and negative urgency effects on impulsivity in the five-choice serial reaction time taskhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4243-2701ToschiChiara1El-Sayed HervigMona12BurghiThiago3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2288-3428SellTorben4LycasMatthew Dominic2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2030-5026MoazenParisa5HuangLi6GetherUlrik2RobbinsTrevor W.1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2282-3660DalleyJeffrey W.17Department of Psychology, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKDepartment of Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DenmarkDepartment of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKSchool of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UKDepartment of Physiology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, IranDepartment of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKDepartment of Psychiatry, Hershel Smith Building for Brain and Mind Sciences, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UKJeffrey W. Dalley, Department of Psychology, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK. Email: jwd20@cam.ac.uk146202262398212822110225661020212942022© The Author(s) 20222022SAGE Publications Ltd and British Neuroscience Association, unless otherwise noted. Manuscript content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Licenseshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Negative urgency describes the tendency for rash and impulsive behaviour during negative emotional states and has been linked to a number of psychiatric disorders. However, there has been limited research on negative urgency as an explanatory mechanism for impulsivity in experimental animals. Such research has important implications for elucidating the neurobiology of negative urgency and thereby the development of future therapeutic interventions. In this study, we investigated the effects of negative urgency using a partial reinforcement schedule to increase the frequency of non-rewarded (i.e. frustrative) trials in the five-choice serial reaction time task, a widely used task to assess visual attention and impulsivity. Using a Markov chain model to analyse trial-by-trial outcomes we found that premature (i.e. impulsive) responses in the five-choice serial reaction time task were more likely to occur after a non-rewarded trial, and mostly after a previous premature trial. However, contrary to the frustration hypothesis of negative urgency, increasing the probability of reinforcement (p(R)) from p(R) = 0.5 to p(R) = 1 increased the number of premature responses in each session. Micro and macro levels of analyses revealed that impulsivity in the five-choice serial reaction time task is governed by at least two processes, one dependent on the overall level of reinforcement hypothesised to determine the state of behavioural activation, the second dependent on trial-by-trial outcomes consistent with negative urgency effects. These processes may depend on distinct neurobiological mechanisms and have relevance for neuropsychiatric disorders that implicate impulsive behaviours dependent on positive and negative affective states.

Premature respondingpartial reinforcementMarkov chainfrustrative non-rewardbehavioural activationdopaminecover-dateJanuary-December 2022typesetterts1