Context dependence of the event‐related brain potential associated with reward and punishment

Holroyd, Clay B.; Larsen, Jeff T.; Cohen, Jonathan D.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2004.00152.x

Cited by 328 publications

(316 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…In particular, empathy has been shown to be modulated by gender [5,36], fairness [5] and emotional sensitivity towards others [4,5,37]. On the other hand, the evaluative component could be modulated by other factors, such as magnitude [38], probability [39] or amount of information provided by the feedback [40]. Importantly, in the reverse condition the two components would compete: whereas the empathic component would lead to an FRN in response to the other's loss, the evaluative component would trigger an FRN to one's own loss (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis

et al. 2010

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BackgroundActions of others may have immediate consequences for oneself. We probed the neural responses associated with the observation of another person's action using event-related potentials in a modified gambling task. In this task a "performer" bet either a higher or lower number and could win or lose this amount. Three different groups of "observers" were also studied. The first (neutral) group simply observed the performer's action, which had no consequences for the observers. In the second (parallel) group, wins/losses of the performer were paralleled by similar wins and losses by the observer. In the third (reverse) group, wins of the performer led to a loss of the observer and vice versa.ResultsERPs of the performers showed a mediofrontal feedback related negativity (FRN) to losses. The neutral and parallel observer groups did similarly show an FRN response to the performer's losses with a topography indistinguishable from that seen in the performers. In the reverse group, however, the FRN occurred for wins of the performer which translated to losses for the observer.ConclusionsTaking into account previous experiments, we suggest that the FRN response in observers is driven by two evaluative processes (a) related to the benefit/loss for oneself and (b) related to the benefit/loss of another person.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis

et al. 2010

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“…These studies have indicated that the evaluative system that produces the feedback negativity processes gains and losses in a contextdependent manner (Holroyd et al, 2004a). That is, the amplitude of the feedback negativity is determined by the value of the eliciting outcome relative to the range of outcomes possible, rather than by the objective value of the outcome.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In line with previous research (Holroyd et al, 2004a), brain areas were considered context dependent if they satisfied the following critical condition: a larger BOLD response to the best outcome in the lose condition (À06) than to the worst outcome in the win condition (+06). In addition, context-dependent brain areas should also show comparable BOLD responses to the intermediate outcomes from the win (+306) and lose (À206) conditions (Fig.…”

Section: Fmrimentioning

confidence: 94%

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Activity in human reward-sensitive brain areas is strongly context dependent

et al. 2005

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Functional neuroimaging research in humans has identified a number of brain areas that are activated by the delivery of primary and secondary reinforcers. The present study investigated how activity in these reward-sensitive regions is modulated by the context in which rewards and punishments are experienced. Fourteen healthy volunteers were scanned during the performance of a simple monetary gambling task that involved a bwinQ condition (in which the possible outcomes were a large monetary gain, a small gain, or no gain of money) and a bloseQ condition (in which the possible outcomes were a large monetary loss, a small loss, or no loss of money). We observed reward-sensitive activity in a number of brain areas previously implicated in reward processing, including the striatum, prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and inferior parietal lobule. Critically, activity in these reward-sensitive areas was highly sensitive to the range of possible outcomes from which an outcome was selected. In particular, these regions were activated to a comparable degree by the best outcomes in each condition-a large gain in the win condition and no loss of money in the lose condition-despite the large difference in the objective value of these outcomes. In addition, some rewardsensitive brain areas showed a binary instead of graded sensitivity to the magnitude of the outcomes from each distribution. These results provide important evidence regarding the way in which the brain scales the motivational value of events by the context in which these events occur. D

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“…The FRN is a medial frontal negativity that appears approximately 200–300 ms following feedback presentation, which is larger following monetary losses than gains (Gehring & Willoughby, 2002; Walsh & Anderson, 2012). Holroyd and Coles (2002) first proposed that the FRN represents a reward prediction error “corresponding to the difference between the amount of reward obtained and the prior expected value of the reward,” indicating that the FRN amplitude should encode both valence and magnitude (see also Hajihosseini & Holroyd, 2013; Holroyd, Larsen, & Cohen, 2004). Since then, the cognitive function of the FRN has been debated for more than a decade, as many researchers suggest that this component reflects a binary rather than continuous evaluation of events along a good‐no good dimension, such that unfavorable feedback elicits a larger FRN than favorable feedback (e.g., Hajcak, Moser, Holroyd, & Simons, 2006; Yeung & Sanfey, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing

Xue

Broster

et al. 2017

Brain and Behavior

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BackgroundOutcome feedback which indicates behavioral consequences are crucial for reinforcement learning and environmental adaptation. Nevertheless, outcome information in daily life is often totally or partially ambiguous. Studying how people interpret this kind of information would provide important knowledge about the human evaluative system.MethodsThis study concentrates on the neural processing of partially ambiguous feedback, that is, either its valence or magnitude is unknown to participants. To address this topic, we sequentially presented valence and magnitude information; electroencephalography (EEG) response to each kind of presentation was recorded and analyzed. The event‐related potential components feedback‐related negativity (FRN) and P3 were used as indices of neural activity.ResultsConsistent with previous literature, the FRN elicited by ambiguous valence was not significantly different from that elicited by negative valence. On the other hand, the FRN elicited by ambiguous magnitude was larger than both the large and small magnitude, indicating the motivation to seek unambiguous magnitude information. The P3 elicited by ambiguous valence and ambiguous magnitude was not significantly different from that elicited by negative valence and small magnitude, respectively, indicating the emotional significance of feedback ambiguity. Finally, the aforementioned effects also manifested in the stage of information integration.ConclusionThese findings indicate both similarities and discrepancies between the processing of valence ambiguity and that of magnitude ambiguity, which may help understand the mechanisms of ambiguous information processing.

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Context dependence of the event‐related brain potential associated with reward and punishment

Cited by 328 publications

References 55 publications

When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis

When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis

Activity in human reward-sensitive brain areas is strongly context dependent

Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing

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