# Role of the Decision-Making Reference Point in Cognition and Psychopathology

> **NIH NIH R21** · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE · 2022 · $211,875

## Abstract

Project Summary
Mood disorders are characterized by a tendency to subjectively evaluate objectively positive
outcomes in a negative light. A fundamental feature of nearly all standard models of decision-
making is the idea that the subjective value of any choice option is shaped by one’s internal
expectation, or ‘reference point’. Using behavioral decision-making tasks informed by an
understanding of how human expectations are set, here propose to test the hypothesis that
affective mood impacts the decision-making reference point—the computational instantiation of
our expectations—and thus drives shifts in subjective value that mark mood pathologies like
major depressive disorder (MDD). In our first Aim we seek to establish that mood correlates with
the static state of the reference point in health choosers and that in mood disorders, principally
MDD, the level of pathology correlates with the easily and objectively measured reference point.
In the second aim we propose to extend these tools to correlate the rate of dynamic reference
point resetting with mood state and depressive symptoms in healthy and pathological
populations. We hypothesize that developing a neurocomputational framework for
understanding the role of the reference point in psychopathology may offer a new construct for
use in the RDoC framework.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10372606
- **Project number:** 1R21MH126197-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** PAUL W GLIMCHER
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $211,875
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-12-22 → 2023-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10372606

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10372606, Role of the Decision-Making Reference Point in Cognition and Psychopathology (1R21MH126197-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10372606. Licensed CC0.

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