# Adolescent Neurodevelopment and Impaired Intrinsic Motivation in Psychosis Risk

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2021 · $591,699

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Intrinsic motivation is the desire for internal satisfactions like curiosity, challenge, and mastery. It
depends upon the ability to self-generate reward responses while performing an activity, even in the absence
of any external rewards. The proposed study aims to discover the neurodevelopmental abnormalities
contributing to impairment of intrinsic motivation in adolescents at risk for psychosis, in order to accelerate
future efforts at early detection, treatment, and prevention. Pathological loss of motivation is a key treatment-
resistant driver of disability in schizophrenia. Recent research shows that negative symptoms including
amotivation often arise in adolescence in those who are vulnerable to psychosis. These negative symptoms
can be the first indicators of the illness prodrome, and they tend to persist and cause poor functional outcomes
even in those individuals who never convert to frank psychosis. Intrinsic motivation deficits appear to be
selectively related to clinical impairment, but they have not been studied in psychosis risk, and the contributory
brain abnormalities remain largely unknown. Recent research has shown that motivation deficits in
schizophrenia are associated with hypofunction in brain reward circuitry including ventral striatum (VS). This
deficit is not only evident in response to monetary reward, but also in response to internal awareness of correct
cognitive performance, providing an imaging marker of impaired intrinsic motivation. However, so far no
studies have examined any specific measures of intrinsic motivation in psychosis risk, and greater
understanding of both intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of motivation will be essential. The proposed five-year
study will conduct multilevel phenotyping of motivation deficits at baseline and at 2-year follow-up in youth age
16-23 at risk for psychosis, leveraging and extending resources from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental
Cohort. This work will characterize the neurodevelopmental pathophysiology of amotivation and develop
predictive biomarkers, with the ultimate goal of ameliorating disabling amotivation in psychosis risk. The
specific aims are: 1) To characterize neural circuitry responsive to intrinsic reinforcement in adolescents; 2) To
characterize brain circuit abnormalities associated cross-sectionally with amotivation severity in psychosis risk;
and 3) To identify longitudinal relationships between neurodevelopment and amotivation in psychosis risk.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10077366
- **Project number:** 5R01MH113565-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** DANIEL H WOLF
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $591,699
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2022-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10077366

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10077366, Adolescent Neurodevelopment and Impaired Intrinsic Motivation in Psychosis Risk (5R01MH113565-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10077366. Licensed CC0.

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