Reward reduces conflict by enhancing attentional control and biasing visual cortical processing

By Srikanth Padmala, Luiz Pessoa. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2011

352 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How does motivation interact with cognitive control during challenging behavioral conditions? Here, we investigated the interactions between motivation and cognition during a response conflict task and tested a specific model of the effect of reward on cognitive processing. Behaviorally, participants exhibited reduced conflict during the reward versus no-reward condition. Brain imaging results revealed that a group of subcortical and fronto-parietal regions was robustly influenced by reward at cue processing and, importantly, that cue-related responses in fronto-parietal attentional regions were predictive of reduced conflict-related signals in the medial pFC (MPFC)/ACC during the upcoming target phase. Path analysis revealed that the relationship between cue responses in the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and interference-related responses in the MPFC during the subsequent target phase was mediated via signals in the left fusiform gyrus, which we linked to distractor-related processing. Finally, reward increased functional connectivity between the right IPS and both bilateral putamen and bilateral nucleus accumbens during the cue phase, a relationship that covaried with across-individual sensitivity to reward in the case of the right nucleus accumbens. Taken together, our findings are consistent with a model in which motivationally salient cues are employed to upregulate top–down control processes that bias the selection of visual information, thereby leading to more efficient stimulus processing during conflict conditions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f55ed4a673f4808120aa3ea759c2f04f3cd9415a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Motivation and cognitive control: from behavior to neural mechanism. (2015, methodology): “A particularly clear demonstration is provided by the study by Padmala & Pessoa (2011) introduced previously (see also Kinnison et al. 2012, Pessoa 2009, Pessoa & Engelmann 2010).”
Effects of motivation on reward and attentional networks: an fMRI study (2012, methodology): “…anticipation is associated with lower activation in attentional networks, possibly due to increased processing efficiency, whereas more difficult, conflict trials are associated with lower activity in regions of the reward system, possibly because such trials are experienced as less rewarding.”