Predictability Modulates Human Brain Response to Reward

By Gregory S. Berns, Samuel M. McClure, Giuseppe Pagnoni, P. R. Montague. Journal of Neuroscience, 2001

731 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Certain classes of stimuli, such as food and drugs, are highly effective in activating reward regions. We show in humans that activity in these regions can be modulated by the predictability of the sequenced delivery of two mildly pleasurable stimuli, orally delivered fruit juice and water. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the activity for rewarding stimuli in both the nucleus accumbens and medial orbitofrontal cortex was greatest when the stimuli were unpredictable. Moreover, the subjects' stated preference for either juice or water was not directly correlated with activity in reward regions but instead was correlated with activity in sensorimotor cortex. For pleasurable stimuli, these findings suggest that predictability modulates the response of human reward regions, and subjective preference can be dissociated from this response.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13fc5cdb0a17f78128b04db7a867bd0883f6194f

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Activity in human reward-sensitive brain areas is strongly context dependent (2005, background): “Neuroimaging studies of reward processing have identified a number of brain areas that are activated by the delivery of primary reinforcers such as appetitive stimuli (Berns et al., 2001; McClure et al., 2003; O’Doherty et al., 2004), and secondary reinforcement such as monetary gains and losses (Br”
Unconscious Affective Reactions to Masked Happy Versus Angry Faces Influence Consumption Behavior and Judgments of Value (2005, background): “, 2001) and, important for the current studies, beverages (Berns et al., 2001) and emotional facial expressions (Critchley et al.”
Wine Tasting: A Professional Handbook (2002, background): “The importance of surprise to pleasure has been directly detected with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Berns et al., 2001).”
Interesting things and curious people: Exploration and engagement as transient states and enduring strengths. (2009, background): “situation, as research confirms that the more that we discover, the more we are attuned to the gaps in our knowledge (Loewenstein, 1994), and attending to these gaps is tension-producing and enjoyable at the same time ( Berns, McClure, Pagnoni, & Montague, 2001; Panksepp & Moskal, 2008).”
Low dopamine striatal D2 receptors are associated with prefrontal metabolism in obese subjects: Possible contributing factors (2008, background): “, 2000) and imaging studies have shown that BA 25 is activated by natural and drug rewards (Breiter et al., 1997, Francis et al., 1999; Berns et al., 2001).”
Reinforcement learning in the brain (2009, background): “The first fMRI studies to search for prediction errors in humans implicated the nucleus accumbens and the orbitofrontal cortex (Berns et al., 2001; Knutson et al., 2001; Pagnoni et al., 2002), both major dopaminergic targets.”
The cognitive functions of the caudate nucleus. (2008, background): “When responses do not determine the outcome (or only non-effortful responses are necessary) then the caudate does not respond (Berns et al., 2001; Breiter et al., 2001; Elliott et al., 2003; McClure et al., 2003; O’Doherty et al., 2006; O’Doherty et al., 2003; Seymour et al., 2004).”
Dissociable Neural Pathways Are Involved in the Recognition of Emotion in Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions (2003, positive): “, 2000), assessing the incentive value of a stimulus (inferior frontal cortex; Rolls, 2000; Berns et al., 2001), and assessing threat or danger (periamygdaloid cortex; Adolphs et al.”
Time Discounting for Primary Rewards (2007, background): “No differences in the amplitudes of brain response to juice and water are found in this analysis (cf. Berns et al., 2001).”
Dissociation of neural networks for anticipation and consumption of monetary and social rewards (2010, positive): “Striatal activation in such tasks is likely related to the brain's effort to establish reward predictability—a mechanism that has also been associated with dopaminergic activity in the ventral striatum(Berns et al., 2001).”
Anticipation of Increasing Monetary Reward Selectively Recruits Nucleus Accumbens (2001, background): “…— — Posterior cingulate (28) 22.21 (1,228,34) 2.48 (21,233,26) 2.54 (1,225,32) — — Cerebellar vermis — — 2.24 (0,249,210) — 2.04 (5,262,229) Underlining indicates conjunction. n 5 8; p , 0.05; uncorrected activity is modulated by unpredictability of delivery of fluid rewards (Berns et al., 2001).”
The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision (2005, background): “(3) Berns, Montague, and their colleagues (Berns et al., 2001; Pagnoni et al., 2002) developed a task where subjects had to choose which of two buttons to press in order to get the maximum gain of $40, by driving a slider all the way up to the top of a bar.”