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Anticipatory representations of reward and threat in perceptual areas from preadolescence to late adolescence.

ABSTRACT: This study examined whether changes in perceptual processes can partially account for the increase in reward-orientated behaviour during adolescence. This was investigated by examining reinforcement-dependent potentiation to discriminative stimuli (S^D) that predicted rewarding or threatening outcomes. To that end, perceptual event-related potentials that are modulated by motivationally salient stimuli, the N170 and Late Positive Potential (LPP), were recorded from 30 preadolescents (9-12 years), 30 adolescents (13-17 years), and 34 late adolescents (18-23 years) while they completed an instrumental task in which they emitted or omitted a motor response to obtain rewards and avoid losses. The LPP, but not the N170, showed age, but not gender, differences in reinforcement-dependent potentiation; preadolescents, adolescents, and late adolescents showed potentiation to S^D that predicted a threat, whereas only preadolescents showed potentiation to S^D that predicted a reward. Notably, the magnitude of threat-related LPP reinforcement-dependent potentiation decreased during the course of adolescence. In addition, greater sensation seeking was associated with greater LPP amplitudes in preadolescent males, but smaller LPP amplitudes in late adolescent males. Critically, these findings provide initial evidence for developmental differences in value-related coding in perceptual areas, where adolescents show greater perceptual biases to avoidance-related cues than to reward-related cues.

SUBMITTER: Howsley P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6987791 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Anticipatory representations of reward and threat in perceptual areas from preadolescence to late adolescence.

Howsley Philippa P Levita Liat L

Developmental cognitive neuroscience 20170312

This study examined whether changes in perceptual processes can partially account for the increase in reward-orientated behaviour during adolescence. This was investigated by examining reinforcement-dependent potentiation to discriminative stimuli (S<sup>D</sup>) that predicted rewarding or threatening outcomes. To that end, perceptual event-related potentials that are modulated by motivationally salient stimuli, the N170 and Late Positive Potential (LPP), were recorded from 30 preadolescents (9 ...[more]

PMID: 28359682

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Project description:BackgroundWhile translational theories link neurodevelopmental changes in threat learning to pathological anxiety, findings from studies in patients inconsistently support these theories. This inconsistency may reflect difficulties in studying large patient samples with wide age ranges using consistent methods. A dearth of imaging data in patients further limits translational advances. We address these gaps through a psychophysiology and structural brain imaging study in a large sample of patients across the lifespan.MethodsA total of 351 participants (8-50 years of age; 209 female subjects; 195 healthy participants and 156 medication-free, treatment-seeking patients with anxiety) completed a differential threat conditioning and extinction paradigm that has been validated in pediatric and adult populations. Skin conductance response indexed psychophysiological response to conditioned (CS+, CS-) and unconditioned threat stimuli. Structural magnetic resonance imaging data were available for 250 participants. Analyses tested anxiety and age associations with psychophysiological response in addition to associations between psychophysiology and brain structure.ResultsRegardless of age, patients and healthy comparison subjects demonstrated comparable differential threat conditioning and extinction. The magnitude of skin conductance response to both conditioned stimulus types differentiated patients from comparison subjects and covaried with dorsal prefrontal cortical thickness; structure-response associations were moderated by anxiety and age in several regions. Unconditioned responding was unrelated to anxiety and brain structure.ConclusionsRather than impaired threat learning, pathological anxiety involves heightened skin conductance response to potential but not immediately present threats; this anxiety-related potentiation of anticipatory responding also relates to variation in brain structure. These findings inform theoretical considerations by highlighting anticipatory response to potential threat in anxiety.

Project description:A perceptual space is a mental workspace of points in a sensory domain that supports similarity and difference judgments and enables further processing such as classification and naming. Perceptual spaces are present across sensory modalities; examples include colors, faces, auditory textures, and odors. Color is perhaps the best-studied perceptual space, but it is atypical in two respects. First, the dimensions of color space are directly linked to the three cone absorption spectra, but the dimensions of generic perceptual spaces are not as readily traceable to single-neuron properties. Second, generic perceptual spaces have more than three dimensions. This is important because representing each distinguishable point in a high-dimensional space by a separate neuron or population is unwieldy; combinatorial strategies may be needed to overcome this hurdle. To study the representation of a complex perceptual space, we focused on a well-characterized 10-dimensional domain of visual textures. Within this domain, we determine perceptual distances in a threshold task (segmentation) and a suprathreshold task (border salience comparison). In N=4 human observers, we find both quantitative and qualitative differences between these sets of measurements. Quantitatively, observers' segmentation thresholds were inconsistent with their uncertainty determined from border salience comparisons. Qualitatively, segmentation thresholds suggested that distances are determined by a coordinate representation with Euclidean geometry. Border salience comparisons, in contrast, indicated a global curvature of the space, and that distances are determined by activity patterns across broadly tuned elements. Thus, our results indicate two representations of this perceptual space, and suggest that they use differing combinatorial strategies.To move from sensory signals to decisions and actions, the brain carries out a sequence of transformations. An important stage in this process is the construction of a "perceptual space" - an internal workspace of sensory information that captures similarities and differences, and enables further processing, such as classification and naming. Perceptual spaces for color, faces, visual and haptic textures and shapes, sounds, and odors (among others) are known to exist. How such spaces are represented is at present unknown. Here, using visual textures as a model, we investigate this. Psychophysical measurements suggest roles for two combinatorial strategies: one based on projections onto coordinate-like axes, and one based on patterns of activity across broadly tuned elements scattered throughout the space.

Dataset Information

Anticipatory representations of reward and threat in perceptual areas from preadolescence to late adolescence.

Publications

Anticipatory representations of reward and threat in perceptual areas from preadolescence to late adolescence.

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