Abstract
Optimal decision-making requires humans to predict the value and probability of prospective (rewarding) outcomes. The aim of the present study was to evaluate and dissociate the cortical mechanisms activated by information on an upcoming potentially rewarded target stimulus with varying probabilities. Electro-cortical activity was recorded during a cued Go/NoGo experiment, during which cue letters signaled upcoming target letters to which participants had to respond. The probability of target letter appearance after the cue letter and the amount of money that could be won for correct and fast responses were orthogonally manipulated across four task blocks. As expected, reward availability affected a prefrontally distributed reward-related positivity, and a centrally distributed P300-like event-related potential (ERP). Moreover, a late prefrontally distributed ERP was affected by probability information. These results show that information on value and probability, respectively, activates separate mechanisms in the cortex. These results contribute to a further understanding of the neural underpinnings of normal and abnormal reward processing.
Highlights
Optimal decision-making requires humans to predict the value and probability of prospective outcomes (Glimcher and Rustichini, 2004)
A number of studies have investigated the effects of reward value on event-related potential (ERP) during outcome anticipation
A reward-sensitive ERP with a similar latency was observed during choice presentation in a gambling task after subjects learned which of the choice options yielded reward (Krigolson, Hassall and Handy, 2014)
Summary
Optimal decision-making requires humans to predict the value and probability of prospective (rewarding) outcomes (Glimcher and Rustichini, 2004). Parts of the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex including the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC) and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) (Breiter et al, 2001; Howard et al, 2015; Kable and Glimcher, 2007; Padmala and Pessoa, 2011; Smith et al, 2009), as well as more posterior regions of the cingulate cortex (Kable and Glimcher, 2007; Kirsch et al, 2003; Padmala and Pessoa, 2011; Smith et al, 2009) show activity during the anticipation of reward These cortical regions act in concert with subcortical structures, such as the ventral striatum and midbrain Some of these studies investigated the effect of increasing the anticipated probability of a reward and reported affected regions in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) (Knutson et al, 2005) and medial prefrontal cortex (Knutson et al, 2005; Yacubian et al, 2006), as well as in the dorsal ACC (dACC) (Smith et al, 2009)
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