scholarly journals The Dopaminergic Midbrain Mediates an Effect of Average Reward on Pavlovian Vigor

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1303-1317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Rigoli ◽  
Benjamin Chew ◽  
Peter Dayan ◽  
Raymond J. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Average Reward ◽  
Neural Encoding ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subgenual Cingulate

Dopamine plays a key role in motivation. Phasic dopamine response reflects a reinforcement prediction error (RPE), whereas tonic dopamine activity is postulated to represent an average reward that mediates motivational vigor. However, it has been hard to find evidence concerning the neural encoding of average reward that is uncorrupted by influences of RPEs. We circumvented this difficulty in a novel visual search task where we measured participants' button pressing vigor in a context where information (underlying an RPE) about future average reward was provided well before the average reward itself. Despite no instrumental consequence, participants' pressing force increased for greater current average reward, consistent with a form of Pavlovian effect on motivational vigor. We recorded participants' brain activity during task performance with fMRI. Greater average reward was associated with enhanced activity in dopaminergic midbrain to a degree that correlated with the relationship between average reward and pressing vigor. Interestingly, an opposite pattern was observed in subgenual cingulate cortex, a region implicated in negative mood and motivational inhibition. These findings highlight a crucial role for dopaminergic midbrain in representing aspects of average reward and motivational vigor.

scholarly journals Refixation control in free viewing: a specialized mechanism divulged by eye-movement-related brain activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (5) ◽  
pp. 2311-2324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey R. Nikolaev ◽  
Radha Nila Meghanathan ◽  
Cees van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Planning Stage ◽  
Eye Fixations ◽  
Free Viewing

In free viewing, the eyes return to previously visited locations rather frequently, even though the attentional and memory-related processes controlling eye-movement show a strong antirefixation bias. To overcome this bias, a special refixation triggering mechanism may have to be recruited. We probed the neural evidence for such a mechanism by combining eye tracking with EEG recording. A distinctive signal associated with refixation planning was observed in the EEG during the presaccadic interval: the presaccadic potential was reduced in amplitude before a refixation compared with normal fixations. The result offers direct evidence for a special refixation mechanism that operates in the saccade planning stage of eye movement control. Once the eyes have landed on the revisited location, acquisition of visual information proceeds indistinguishably from ordinary fixations. NEW & NOTEWORTHY A substantial proportion of eye fixations in human natural viewing behavior are revisits of recently visited locations, i.e., refixations. Our recently developed methods enabled us to study refixations in a free viewing visual search task, using combined eye movement and EEG recording. We identified in the EEG a distinctive refixation-related signal, signifying a control mechanism specific to refixations as opposed to ordinary eye fixations.

Sincere praise and flattery: Reward value and association with the praise-seeking trait

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shotaro Fujiwara ◽  
Ryo Ishibashi ◽  
Azumi Tanabe-Ishibashi ◽  
Ryuta Kawashima ◽  
Motoaki Sugiura
Keyword(s):  
Negative Feedback ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Communication Effectiveness ◽  
Lower Activation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Emotional Effects

Sincere praise reliably conveys positive or negative feedback, while flattery always conveys positive but unreliable feedback. These two praise types have not been compared in terms of communication effectiveness and individual preferences using neuroimaging. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured brain activity when healthy young participants received sincere praise or flattery after performing a visual search task. Higher activation was observed in the right nucleus accumbens during sincere praise than during flattery, and praise reliability correlated with posterior cingulate cortex activity, implying a motivational effect of sincere praise. In line with this, sincere praise uniquely activated several cortical areas potentially involved in concern regarding others' evaluations. A high praise-seeking tendency was associated with lower activation of the inferior parietal sulcus during sincere praise compared to flattery after poor task performance, potentially reflecting suppression of negative feedback to maintain self-esteem. In summary, the neural dynamics of the motivational and socio-emotional effects of praise differed.

scholarly journals The Effect of Information Organization on Cognitive Workload and Visual Search Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 302-306
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Joe ◽  
Casey R. Kovesdi ◽  
Andrea Mack ◽  
Tina Miyake
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Information Organization ◽  
Cognitive Workload ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Accuracy Tradeoff

This study examined the relationship between how visual information is organized and people’s visual search performance. Specifically, we systematically varied how visual search information was organized (from well-organized to disorganized), and then asked participants to perform a visual search task involving finding and identifying a number of visual targets within the field of visual non-targets. We hypothesized that the visual search task would be easier when the information was well-organized versus when it was disorganized. We further speculated that visual search performance would be mediated by cognitive workload, and that the results could be generally described by the well-established speed-accuracy tradeoff phenomenon. This paper presents the details of the study we designed and our results.

scholarly journals A Precise Quantification of how Prior Experience Informs Current Behavior

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Kramer ◽  
Patrick Cox ◽  
Stephen Mitroff ◽  
Dwight Kravitz
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
General Mechanism ◽  
Prior History ◽  
Subsequent Performance ◽  
Precise Quantification ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Current Behavior

Human behavior does not exist in a bubble—it is influenced by countless forces, including each individual’s current goals, pre-existing cognitive biases, and prior experience. The current project leveraged a massive behavioral dataset to provide a data-driven quantification of the relationship between prior experience and current behavior. Data from two different behavioral tasks (a categorization task and a visual search task) demonstrated that prior history had a precise, systematic, and meaningful influence on subsequent performance. Specifically, the greater the evidence for (or against) all aspects of the current trial, the more (or less) efficient behavior was on that trial. The robust influence of prior experience was present for even distracting and likely unattended information. The ubiquity and consistency of the effect for features both related and unrelated to stimulus presence suggests a domain-general mechanism that increases the efficiency of behavior in contexts that match prior experience. These findings are theoretically important for understanding behavioral adaptation, experimentally powerful for directly addressing effects of previous trials when designing and analyzing research projects, and potentially useful for optimizing behavior in various applied contexts.

Stress as a Function of the Rate at Which Information is Presented on a Video Display Terminal

1983 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 516-520
Author(s):  
Woodrow Barfield ◽  
Bill West ◽  
Mica Robertson ◽  
F. Lynne Taylor ◽  
Nelson Tamplin
Keyword(s):  
Search Task ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
Type I Error ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Type I ◽  
Type Ii Error ◽  
Video Display ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subjective Reports

The increasing use of computers in the work environment has resulted in the need to develop human factors principles that improve human-computer interaction. Systems which are incompatible with the information processing capabilities of the user may lead to information overload or underload and to stress. The following experiment examines the relationship between stress and performance by varying rates of information and density levels on a VDT. Ten subjects (Ss) performed a visual search task on a VDT as information was “scrolled” across the screen. Ss stopped the scrolling mode by pushing the skip bar when they identified the target. This resulted either in a correct detection, Type I error (identifying the wrong target), or Type II error (missing the target). Results revealed that high rates of information presentation lead to increased errors as well as increased subjective reports of stress (Feeling Tone Checklist). Recommendations for system design are discussed.

scholarly journals Comparing Segmentation by Time and by Motion in Visual Search: An fMRI Investigation

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1710-1722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dent ◽  
Harriet Allen ◽  
Glyn W. Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Search Display ◽  
Temporal Segmentation ◽  
Time And Motion ◽  
Correlated Activity ◽  
Visual Areas

Brain activity was recorded while participants engaged in a difficult visual search task for a target defined by the spatial configuration of its component elements. The search displays were segmented by time (a preview then a search display), by motion, or were unsegmented. A preparatory network showed activity to the preview display, in the time but not in the motion segmentation condition. A region of the precuneus showed (i) higher activation when displays were segmented by time or by motion, and (ii) correlated activity with larger segmentation benefits behaviorally, regardless of the cue. Additionally, the results revealed that success in temporal segmentation was correlated with reduced activation in early visual areas, including V1. The results depict partially overlapping brain networks for segmentation in search by time and motion, with both cue-independent and cue-specific mechanisms.

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