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Predictability modulates human brain response to reward.

G S Berns1, S M McClure, G Pagnoni

  • 1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA. gberns@emory.edu

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|April 18, 2001
PubMed
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Predictability influences human reward regions, with unpredictable pleasurable stimuli like juice or water showing greater activity. Subjective preference, however, correlates with sensorimotor cortex activity, not reward regions.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Reward regions, including the nucleus accumbens and medial orbitofrontal cortex, are activated by highly salient stimuli like food and drugs.
  • Understanding how the brain processes pleasure and preference is crucial for various fields, including addiction research and marketing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how the predictability of mildly pleasurable stimuli affects activity in human reward regions.
  • To determine if subjective preference for stimuli is directly correlated with activity in reward regions.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity in human participants.
  • Participants received orally delivered, mildly pleasurable stimuli (fruit juice and water) in a controlled sequence.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participants' subjective preferences for the stimuli were recorded.

    • Main Results:

    • Activity in the nucleus accumbens and medial orbitofrontal cortex was significantly higher when the delivery of stimuli was unpredictable.
    • Subjective preference ratings for juice or water did not correlate with activity in reward regions.
    • Stimulus preference correlated with activity in sensorimotor cortex.

    Conclusions:

    • Predictability plays a significant role in modulating the response of human reward regions to pleasurable stimuli.
    • Subjective preference for pleasurable stimuli can be dissociated from the neural activity in core reward circuits.
    • These findings offer new insights into the neurobiological basis of reward processing and decision-making.