Striatal-frontal network activation during voluntary task selection under conditions of monetary reward

Abstract

During voluntary task selection, a number of internal and external biases may guide such a choice. However, it is not well understood how reward influences task selection when multiple options are possible. To address this issue, we examined brain activation in a voluntary task-switching paradigm while participants underwent fMRI (n = 19). To reinforce the overall goal to choose the tasks randomly, participants were told of a large bonus that they would receive at the end of the experiment for making random task choices. We also examined how occasional, random rewards influenced both task performance and brain activation. We hypothesized that these transient rewards would increase the value of the just-performed task, and therefore bias participants to choose to repeat the same task on the subsequent trial. Contrary to expectations, transient reward had no consistent behavioral effect on subsequent task choice. Nevertheless, the receipt of such rewards did influence activation in brain regions associated with reward processing as well as those associated with goal-directed control. In addition, reward on a prior trial was found to influence activation during task choice on a subsequent trial, with greater activation in a number of executive function regions compared with no-reward trials. We posit that both the random presentation of transient rewards and the overall task bonus for random task choices together reinforced the goal to choose the tasks randomly, which in turn influenced activation in both reward-related regions and those regions involved in abstract goal processing.

Dynamic cognitive flexibility

“…Further, it is not possible from the results of Experiment 1 alone to rule out the influence of taskspecific factors in producing the decline in switch rate rather than a more general process such as fatigue or effort avoidance that would occur in other voluntary task switching paradigms. For example, while the number Stroop has been used previously in task switching literature (Orr et al, 2012(Orr et al, , 2019Orr & Banich, 2014;Petruo et al, 2019), it introduces more conflict than other task switching paradigms due to stimulus congruency effects and the use of bivalent stimuli; the resulting demands on cognitive load might affect the rate of fatigue or the rate at which effort expenditure is reduced. Therefore, generalizing the results of Experiment 1 to a different voluntary task switching paradigm which did not include these additional sources of conflict would be fruitful in helping to rule out the possibility of task-specific factors as an underlying cause of switch rate declines.…”

Prominent Striatum Amyloid Retention in Early-Onset Familial Alzheimer's Disease With PSEN1 Mutations: A Pilot PET/MR Study

“…According to this study, the frontal cortex plays a vital role in determining the biological significance of associative information, and the input of the hippocampus may not be filtered. Moreover, several studies pointed out that the frontal lobe and the striatum are essential for executive function and decision-making (Seok et al, 2015 ; Orr et al, 2019 ). Therefore, the significant correlation between the striatum and cortical areas may explain the decision-making dysfunction in patients with EOFAD.…”

Sex-Specific Functional Connectivity in the Reward Network Related to Distinct Gender Roles

“…In our exploratory results, integration in the posterior OFC was associated with females’ femininity, which indicated that the type of reward fed back to females who adhere to the social expectations of feminine gender roles might be limited to primary rewards ( Sescousse et al, 2010 , 2013 ). By contrast, integration in the FP was associated with masculinity in females, suggesting that the abstract positive reinforcement process was related to females’ masculinity ( Yankouskaya et al, 2017 ), as the role of FP was involved in monitoring or evaluating self-generated decisions ( Tsujimoto et al, 2009 ), maintaining abstract cognitive representations and action plans ( Orr et al, 2019 ), and persisting with goal-directed behaviors ( Hosoda et al, 2020 ).…”