Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Soder, Heather E.
• Potts, Geoffrey F.

Titel

Medial frontal cortex response to unexpected motivationally salient outcomes

Ist Teil von

• International journal of psychophysiology, 2018-10, Vol.132 (Pt B), p.268-276

Ort / Verlag

Netherlands: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Access via ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The medial frontal cortex (MFC) plays a central role allocating resources to process salient information, in part by responding to prediction errors. While there is some recent debate, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) is thought to index a reward prediction error by signaling outcomes that are worse than expected. A recent study utilizing electric shock provided data inconsistent with these accounts and reported that the omission of both appetitive (money) and aversive outcomes (electric shocks) elicited a medial frontal negativity. These data suggest that the ERPs within this time range support a salience prediction error that responds to unexpected events regardless of valence. To compare the reward and salience prediction error models, we employed a design that delivered both appetitive (monetary) and aversive (noise burst) outcomes. Participants completed a passive S1/S2 prediction design where S1 predicted S2 with 80% accuracy and S2 predicted the outcome with 100% accuracy. We compared both earlier and later ERP responses over the medial frontal cortex to compare the salience and reward prediction hypotheses. Considering both time windows, the ERP response to S2 in the early time window was most positive when S2 signaled that an outcome was unexpectedly delivered and in the later time window, was most negative when an outcome was unexpectedly withheld, regardless of outcome valence. Thus, these results are more consistent with a salience prediction error rather than a reward prediction error. •Compared the reward prediction and salience prediction models of medial frontal cortex functioning with ERPs.•Employed passive task with delivered/withheld rewards ($1/$0) and punishments (noist burst/silence).•Stimuli predicting the delivery of an event elicited an early positivity (P2-like).•Stimuli predicting the withholding of an event elicited a larger negativity (FRN-like).•Results support salience prediction model over reward prediction model.