Cortical Brain Activity Reflecting Attentional Biasing Toward Reward-Predicting Cues Covaries with Economic Decision-Making Performance.
Abstract
Adaptive choice behavior depends critically on identifying and learning from outcome-predicting
cues. We hypothesized that attention may be preferentially directed toward certain
outcome-predicting cues. We studied this possibility by analyzing event-related potential
(ERP) responses in humans during a probabilistic decision-making task. Participants
viewed pairs of outcome-predicting visual cues and then chose to wager either a small
(i.e., loss-minimizing) or large (i.e., gain-maximizing) amount of money. The cues
were bilaterally presented, which allowed us to extract the relative neural responses
to each cue by using a contralateral-versus-ipsilateral ERP contrast. We found an
early lateralized ERP response, whose features matched the attention-shift-related
N2pc component and whose amplitude scaled with the learned reward-predicting value
of the cues as predicted by an attention-for-reward model. Consistently, we found
a double dissociation involving the N2pc. Across participants, gain-maximization positively
correlated with the N2pc amplitude to the most reliable gain-predicting cue, suggesting
an attentional bias toward such cues. Conversely, loss-minimization was negatively
correlated with the N2pc amplitude to the most reliable loss-predicting cue, suggesting
an attentional avoidance toward such stimuli. These results indicate that learned
stimulus-reward associations can influence rapid attention allocation, and that differences
in this process are associated with individual differences in economic decision-making
performance.
Type
Journal articleSubject
EEGERP
N2pc
learning
reward
Adolescent
Adult
Attention
Brain
Brain Mapping
Cues
Decision Making
Evoked Potentials
Female
Humans
Male
Photic Stimulation
Reaction Time
Reward
Space Perception
Visual Perception
Young Adult
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12006Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1093/cercor/bhu160Publication Info
San Martín, René; Appelbaum, Lawrence G; Huettel, Scott A; & Woldorff, Marty G (2016). Cortical Brain Activity Reflecting Attentional Biasing Toward Reward-Predicting Cues
Covaries with Economic Decision-Making Performance. Cereb Cortex, 26(1). pp. 1-11. 10.1093/cercor/bhu160. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12006.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Lawrence Gregory Appelbaum
Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Greg Appelbaum is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences in the Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Appelbaum's research
interests primarily concern the brain mechanisms underlying visual cognition, how
these capabilities differ among individuals, and how they can be improved through
behavioral, neurofeedback, and neuromodulation interventions. Within the field of
cognitive neuroscience, his research has addressed visual pe
Scott Huettel
Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Research in my laboratory investigates the brain mechanisms underlying economic and
social decision making; collectively, this research falls into the field of “decision
neuroscience” or "neuroeconomics". My laboratory uses fMRI to probe brain function,
behavioral assays to characterize individual differences, and other physiological
methods (e.g., eye tracking, pharmacological manipulation, genetics) to link brain
and behavior. Concurrent with research on basic processes, my labo
Marty G. Woldorff
Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Woldorff's main research interest is in the cognitive neuroscience of attention.
At each and every moment of our lives, we are bombarded by a welter of sensory information
coming at us from a myriad of directions and through our various sensory modalities
-- much more than we can fully process. We must continuously select and extract the
most important information from this welter of sensory inputs. How the human brain
accomplishes this is one of the core challenges of modern cognitive neuro
Alphabetical list of authors with Scholars@Duke profiles.

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info