Learning from experience: Event-related potential correlates of reward processing, neural adaptation, and behavioral choice

Walsh, Matthew M.; Anderson, John R.

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.05.008

Cited by 457 publications

(541 citation statements)

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“…Previous studies focusing on the age-related alterations in feedback evaluation processes found both differences and similarities in the morphology of the FRN and related P3 between young and elderly participants [35,36,39,[56][57][58][59][60]. The finding of the present study that the magnitude of the FRN component for the negative feedback (the balloon burst itself) did not differ between the two age groups suggests that the rapid processing of negative feedback valence was equally functional in both groups emphasizing the intact sensitivity to negative events in the elderly.…”

Section: Interpretation Of the Electrophysiological Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Age-related characteristics of risky decision-making and progressive expectation formation

Kardos

Kóbor

Takács

et al. 2016

Behavioural Brain Research

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During daily encounters, it is inevitable that people take risks. Investigating the sequential processing of risk hazards involve expectation formation about outcome contingencies. The present study aimed to explore risk behavior and its neural correlates in sequences of decision making, particularly in old age, which represents a critical period regarding risk-taking propensity. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task was used in an electrophysiological setting with young and elderly age groups. During the task each additional pump on a virtual balloon increased the likelihood of a balloon burst but also increased the chance to collect more reward. Event-related potentials associated with rewarding feedback were analyzed based on the forthcoming decisions (whether to continue or to stop) in order to differentiate between states of expectation towards gain or loss. In the young, the reward positivity ERP component increased as a function of reward contingencies with the largest amplitude for rewarding feedback followed by the decision to stop. In the elderly, however, reward positivity did not reflect the effect of reward structure. Behavioral indices of risk-taking propensity suggest that the performance of the young and the elderly were dissociable only with respect to response times: The elderly was characterized by hesitation and more deliberative decision making throughout the experiment. These findings signify that sequential tracking of outcome contingencies has a key role in cost-efficient action planning and progressive expectation formation.Keywords: Aging; Decision making; Feedback-related ERPs; Reward positivity; Risk-taking behavior Whether we are aware of the fact or not, risk-taking behavior occurs more frequently during our everyday actions than generally thought. Besides those simple and common examples like taking only one more drink before driving, a temporary excursion from one's self-regulatory goals, i.e., risking the long-term goals for short-term advantages such as making a cheat in a diet, can be considered as a more complex form of 'gambling' [1]. Risk-taking behavior can be defined as a decision making propensity motivated by gain reward beside the possible opportunity to lose [2][3][4]. Since natural circumstances usually include continuous fluctuations in risk, the ability of making decisions based on the acquisition of action-outcome contingencies is an essential part of adaptive risk behavior [5]. In particular, old age represents a critical period due to substantial neurocognitive changes having an effect on both frontal cortical and subcortical brain areas known to be involved in decision making [6,7]. The question remains, however, whether there is a specific inability of the acquisition of relevant information behind the possibly reduced decision quality of the elderly.From the perspective of self-report questionnaires, elderly are characterized by higher risk-avoidance tendency [8]. However, regarding risk behavior, results show evidence for both normal and altered patterns of ...

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Section: Interpretation Of the Electrophysiological Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Age-related characteristics of risky decision-making and progressive expectation formation

Kardos

Kóbor

Takács

et al. 2016

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…Neural responses to negative or unexpected action outcomes have been the main target of research seeking to understand neural mechanisms of adaptive behavior in humans (Luft, 2014; Walsh & Anderson, 2012; Weinberg, Dieterich, & Riesel, 2014). Electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) studies have identified evoked responses elicited by errors in motor tasks (error‐related negativity, ERN, Ne) (Falkenstein, Hohnsbein, & Hoormann, 1995; Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Keil, Weisz, Paul‐Jordanov, & Wienbruch, 2010) as well as by external feedback (Feedback‐Related Negativity, FRN) (Doñamayor, Marco‐Pallarés, Heldmann, Schoenfeld, & Münte, 2011; Doñamayor, Schoenfeld, & Münte, 2012b; Gehring & Willoughby, 2002; Miltner, Braun, & Coles, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for a general performance‐monitoring system in the human brain

Zubarev

Parkkonen

2018

Human Brain Mapping

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Adaptive behavior relies on the ability of the brain to form predictions and monitor action outcomes. In the human brain, the same system is thought to monitor action outcomes regardless of whether the information originates from internal (e.g., proprioceptive) and external (e.g., visual) sensory channels. Neural signatures of processing motor errors and action outcomes communicated by external feedback have been studied extensively; however, the existence of such a general action‐monitoring system has not been tested directly. Here, we use concurrent EEG‐MEG measurements and a probabilistic learning task to demonstrate that event‐related responses measured by electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography display spatiotemporal patterns that allow an effective transfer of a multivariate statistical model discriminating the outcomes across the following conditions: (a) erroneous versus correct motor output, (b) negative versus positive feedback, (c) high‐ versus low‐surprise negative feedback, and (d) erroneous versus correct brain–computer‐interface output. We further show that these patterns originate from highly‐overlapping neural sources in the medial frontal and the medial parietal cortices. We conclude that information about action outcomes arriving from internal or external sensory channels converges to the same neural system in the human brain, that matches this information to the internal predictions.

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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).…”

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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Learning from experience: Event-related potential correlates of reward processing, neural adaptation, and behavioral choice

Cited by 457 publications

References 195 publications

Age-related characteristics of risky decision-making and progressive expectation formation

Age-related characteristics of risky decision-making and progressive expectation formation

Evidence for a general performance‐monitoring system in the human brain

Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing

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