Effective Connectivity during an Avoidance-Based Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Task

Abstract

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to a phenomenon whereby a classically conditioned stimulus (CS) impacts the motivational salience of instrumental behavior. We examined behavioral response patterns and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based effective connectivity during an avoidance-based PIT task. Eleven participants (8 females; Mage = 28.2, SD = 2.8, range = 25–32 years) completed the task. Effective connectivity between a priori brain regions engaged during the task was determined using hemodynamic response function group iterative multiple model estimation (HRF-GIMME). Participants exhibited behavior that was suggestive of specific PIT, a CS previously associated with a reinforcing outcome increased instrumental responding directed at the same outcome. We did not find evidence for general PIT; a CS did not significantly increase instrumental responding towards a different but related outcome. Using HRF-GIMME, we recovered effective connectivity maps among corticostriatal circuits engaged during the task. Group-level paths revealed directional effects from left putamen to right insula and from right putamen to right cingulate. Importantly, a direct effect of specific PIT stimuli on blood–oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the left putamen was found. Results provide initial evidence of effective connectivity in key brain regions in an avoidance-based PIT task network. This study adds to the literature studying PIT effects in humans and employing GIMME models to understand how psychological phenomena are supported in the brain.

General Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer in humans: Evidence from Bayesian inference

“…A major difference in the experimental implementation of general transfer concerns the use of cues associated with outcomes for which an action was learned (or not) during the instrumental conditioning phase (Table 1). While many authors operationalized general transfer as the capacity of a Pavlovian cue to bias choice toward an outcome that was never obtained through an instrumental action (Table 1: General PIT No−action ) (Nadler et al, 2011;Lewis et al, 2013;Watson et al, 2014;Morris et al, 2015;Claes et al, 2016;Lehner et al, 2016;Garofalo and Robbins, 2017;Quail et al, 2017;Meemken and Horstmann, 2019;Alarcón and Bonardi, 2020b;Hinojosa-Aguayo and González, 2020;Krypotos and Engelhard, 2020;Soutschek et al, 2020;van Timmeren et al, 2020;Petrie et al, 2021), others used a different operationalization of general transfer, where the Pavlovian cue predicted an outcome previously earned by a specific instrumental action, which, however, was no longer available in the transfer phase (Prévost et al, 2012;Garofalo et al, 2019Garofalo et al, , 2020Garofalo et al, , 2021Sennwald et al, 2020; Such a seemingly minor methodological difference actually affects the affordance-like properties of the outcome, i.e., its link with a motor program to obtain the outcome itself. According to some theories (Cisek, 2007), for instance, the presence of a response-outcome link may indeed enhance the motivational value of the outcome.…”

“…To date, the findings on human general transfer have been quite heterogeneous. For instance, while some studies report evidence for general transfer using response rate as a dependent variable ( Lewis et al, 2013 ; Quail et al, 2017 ; Alarcón and Bonardi, 2020b ), others failed to observe it ( Meemken and Horstmann, 2019 ; Petrie et al, 2021 ), or found it only in aversive conditions ( Nadler et al, 2011 ), or using vigor as a dependent variable ( Watson et al, 2014 ; Garofalo and Robbins, 2017 ). Such heterogeneity in results may be at least partially explained by the lack of studies directly investigating this general transfer effect.…”