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Positive mood enhances reward-related neural activity.

ABSTRACT: Although behavioral research has shown that positive mood leads to desired outcomes in nearly every major life domain, no studies have directly examined the effects of positive mood on the neural processes underlying reward-related affect and goal-directed behavior. To address this gap, participants in the present fMRI study experienced either a positive (n?=?20) or neutral (n?=?20) mood induction and subsequently completed a monetary incentive delay task that assessed reward and loss processing. Consistent with prediction, positive mood elevated activity specifically during reward anticipation in corticostriatal neural regions that have been implicated in reward processing and goal-directed behavior, including the nucleus accumbens, caudate, lateral orbitofrontal cortex and putamen, as well as related paralimbic regions, including the anterior insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These effects were not observed during reward outcome, loss anticipation or loss outcome. Critically, this is the first study to report that positive mood enhances reward-related neural activity. Our findings have implications for uncovering the neural mechanisms by which positive mood enhances goal-directed behavior, understanding the malleability of reward-related neural activity, and developing targeted treatments for psychiatric disorders characterized by deficits in reward processing.

SUBMITTER: Young CB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4884311 | biostudies-other | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Positive mood enhances reward-related neural activity.

Young Christina B CB Nusslock Robin R

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20160201 6

Although behavioral research has shown that positive mood leads to desired outcomes in nearly every major life domain, no studies have directly examined the effects of positive mood on the neural processes underlying reward-related affect and goal-directed behavior. To address this gap, participants in the present fMRI study experienced either a positive (n = 20) or neutral (n = 20) mood induction and subsequently completed a monetary incentive delay task that assessed reward and loss processing ...[more]

PMID: 26833919

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Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social functioning and difficulties in forming social bonds. According to the social motivation theory of ASD, people with ASD fail to attend social stimuli because they do not experience them as rewarding, resulting in deficits in social cognition. In neurotypical (NT) individuals, more rewarding faces have been shown to elicit greater spontaneous facial mimicry. This association between reward and mimicry is reduced in people with high autistic traits, suggesting that altered reward processing might explain the deficits in spontaneous facial mimicry observed in individuals with ASD. In a previous study, we observed that learned reward value of a face modulates mimicry-related neural response to it and that this modulation is reduced in people with high autistic traits. Using an identical evaluative conditioning paradigm where neutral faces were conditioned with high and low rewards, we tested the modulating effect of reward value on mimicry-related brain activity in a group of adults with and without ASD. We focused on the activity in a cluster within the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) identified through an independent meta-analysis of 139 neuroimaging studies of mimicry, in response to passively viewing videos of the conditioned faces. The blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response contrast of high- vs. low-reward faces was reduced in participants with ASD compared to NT controls. The extent of reward-driven modulation was negatively correlated with autistic traits across the whole sample. Our results indicate that the mimicry-related brain response is less modulated by learned reward value in individuals with ASD when compared to NT controls. In previous studies, we found in a similar sample that being mimicked by faces was associated with less reward-related brain response in individuals ASD compared to an NT sample, suggesting that the link between reward and mimicry is affected in both directions in ASD. Together, this reduced bidirectional link between reward and mimicry can point to a potential mechanism underlying some of the social cognitive features of ASD.

Project description:Reward-processing involves two temporal stages characterized by two distinct neural processes: reward-anticipation and reward-outcome. Intriguingly, very little research has examined the relationship between neural processes involved in reward-anticipation and reward-outcome. To investigate this, one needs to consider the heterogeneity of reward-processing within each stage. To identify different stages of reward processing, we adapted a reward time-estimation task. While EEG data were recorded, participants were instructed to button-press 3.5s after the onset of an Anticipation-Cue and received monetary reward for good time-estimation on the Reward trials, but not on No-Reward trials. We first separated reward-anticipation into event related potentials (ERPs) occurring at three sub-stages: reward/no-reward cue-evaluation, motor-preparation and feedback-anticipation. During reward/no-reward cue-evaluation, the Reward-Anticipation Cue led to a smaller N2 and larger P3. During motor-preparation, we report, for the first time, that the Reward-Anticipation Cue enhanced the Readiness Potential (RP), starting approximately 1s before movement. At the subsequent feedback-anticipation stage, the Reward-Anticipation Cue elevated the Stimulus-Preceding Negativity (SPN). We also separated reward-outcome ERPs into different components occurring at different time-windows: the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN), Feedback-P3 (FB-P3) and Late-Positive Potentials (LPP). Lastly, we examined the relationship between reward-anticipation and reward-outcome ERPs. We report that individual-differences in specific reward-anticipation ERPs uniquely predicted specific reward-outcome ERPs. In particular, the reward-anticipation Early-RP (1-.8s before movement) predicted early reward-outcome ERPs (FRN and FB-P3), whereas, the reward-anticipation SPN most strongly predicted a later reward-outcome ERP (LPP). Results have important implications for understanding the nature of the relationship between reward-anticipation and reward-outcome neural-processes.

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Positive mood enhances reward-related neural activity.

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Positive mood enhances reward-related neural activity.

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