Prefrontal signals precede striatal signals for biased credit assignment in motivational learning biases

© 2024. The Author(s)..

Actions are biased by the outcomes they can produce: Humans are more likely to show action under reward prospect, but hold back under punishment prospect. Such motivational biases derive not only from biased response selection, but also from biased learning: humans tend to attribute rewards to their own actions, but are reluctant to attribute punishments to having held back. The neural origin of these biases is unclear. Specifically, it remains open whether motivational biases arise primarily from the architecture of subcortical regions or also reflect cortical influences, the latter being typically associated with increased behavioral flexibility and control beyond stereotyped behaviors. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI allowed us to track which regions encoded biased prediction errors in which order. Biased prediction errors occurred in cortical regions (dorsal anterior and posterior cingulate cortices) before subcortical regions (striatum). These results highlight that biased learning is not a mere feature of the basal ganglia, but arises through prefrontal cortical contributions, revealing motivational biases to be a potentially flexible, sophisticated mechanism.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:15

Enthalten in:

Nature communications - 15(2024), 1 vom: 02. Jan., Seite 19

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Algermissen, Johannes [VerfasserIn]
Swart, Jennifer C [VerfasserIn]
Scheeringa, René [VerfasserIn]
Cools, Roshan [VerfasserIn]
den Ouden, Hanneke E M [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 05.01.2024

Date Revised 18.04.2024

published: Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1038/s41467-023-44632-x

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM366587161