Stress diminishes outcome but enhances response representations during instrumental learning.

Abstract

Stress may shift behavioural control from a goal-directed system that encodes action-outcome relationships to a habitual system that learns stimulus-response associations. Although this shift to habits is highly relevant for stress-related psychopathologies, limitations of existing behavioural paradigms hinder research from answering the fundamental question of whether the stress-induced bias to habits is due to reduced outcome processing or enhanced response processing at the time of stimulus presentation, or both. Here, we used EEG-based multivariate pattern analysis to decode neural outcome representations crucial for goal-directed control, as well as response representations during instrumental learning. We show that stress reduced outcome representations but enhanced response representations. Both were directly associated with a behavioural index of habitual responding. Furthermore, changes in outcome and response representations were uncorrelated, suggesting that these may reflect distinct processes. Our findings indicate that habitual behaviour under stress may be the result of both enhanced stimulus-response processing and diminished outcome processing.