Available alternative incentives modulate anticipatory nucleus accumbens activation - PubMed (original) (raw)

Available alternative incentives modulate anticipatory nucleus accumbens activation

Jeffrey C Cooper et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2009 Dec.

Abstract

A reward or punishment can seem better or worse depending on what else might have happened. Little is known, however, about how neural representations of an anticipated incentive might be influenced by the available alternatives. We used event-related FMRI to investigate the activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), while we varied the available alternative incentives in a monetary incentive delay task. Some task blocks included only uncertain gains and losses; others included the same uncertain gains and losses intermixed with certain gains and losses. The availability of certain gains and losses increased NAcc activation for uncertain losses and decreased the difference between uncertain gains and losses. We suggest that this pattern of activation can result from reference point changes across blocks, and that the worst available loss may serve as an important anchor for NAcc activation. These findings imply that NAcc activation represents anticipated incentive value relative to the current context of available alternative gains and losses.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Trial structure and available incentives. Conditions were distinguished by different cues. During UNC-ONLY blocks, four cues were used; during CERT-UNC blocks, eight different cues were used. Outcome amounts were given both for the current trial and the total earned within the current block.

Fig. 2

Percent signal change in NAcc. Points represent mean percent signal change from the experiment mean in bilateral NAcc at 4 s following cue onset. Error bars represent standard errors within participants. Only uncertain trials are shown, and only between-set differences for the same incentive are indicated. See Table 3 for data and all pairwise comparisons. ***P < 0.001.

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Available alternative incentives modulate anticipatory nucleus accumbens activation - PubMed (original) (raw)