Poster No:
771
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Wen-Wei Lin1,2, Ming-Tsung Tseng3
Institutions:
1National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan, 3Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, Taipei, TAIWAN
First Author:
Wen-Wei Lin
National Taiwan University|Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences
Taipei, Taiwan|Taipei, Taiwan
Co-Author:
Introduction:
Reward and punishment act as important factors that modulate human behavior through learning to maximize the former, and minimizing the latter. Although much is known about how reward and punishment contribute to guiding our behavior independently, how these two types of learning interact with each other and the underlying mechanism remain largely unclear. By simultaneously associating an overlapped option with rewarding and punishing outcomes in an instrumental learning task, we aim to investigate the interaction between reward learning and punishment learning.
Methods:
We scanned 30 healthy subjects using 3 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed a probabilistic instrumental learning task with binary choices. The learning task included both reward learning and punishment learning at the same time with a choice option overlapping in both learnings. We used monetary reward as reward stimuli, and monetary loss or electrical painful stimulation as punishment stimuli. The subjects were instructed to try their best to maximize reward and avoid receiving punishment during the learning task.
Results:
We found that only the performance (i.e., the correct rate) of reward learning was interfered by punishment learning, but not vice versa, when the overlapped option was in both learnings. Further, the performance of the interfered reward learning correlated with participants' exploration behavior, which could be explained by an increase in BOLD signals within exploration-related brain regions.
Conclusions:
In conclusion, our study suggests a behavioral interference effect of punishment learning on reward learning, which may be linked to participant's altered exploration behavior. From a neural aspect, increased BOLD signals in exploration-related brain regions provides insights into the asymmetry in the interaction between reward learning and punishment learning.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Reward and Punishment 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 2
Keywords:
Computational Neuroscience
Learning
MRI
Pain
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Palminteri, S., Khamassi, M., Joffily, M., & Coricelli, G. (2015). 'Contextual modulation of value signals in reward and punishment learning', Nature Communications 6, 8096.