Nonaffective motivation modulates the sustained LPP (1,000-2,000 ms)

Past work has demonstrated that the sustained late positive potential (LPP) is modulated by motivational demands of affective content. The current experiment sought to investigate how motivational demands in nonaffective tasks would modulate the sustained LPP. Using a modified oddball paradigm, participants either counted the number of appearances of a nonaffective target or determined the duration length of the target. Results showed that targets in both the counted and duration tasks produced larger LPPs in the early window (400-1,000 ms) than the neutral standard. Only the duration target produced larger LPPs in the late time window (1,000-2,000 ms) than the neutral standard. These results suggest that the late LPP is a measure of persistent motivated attentional processing and can be modulated by nonaffective motivation.