Goals and task difficulty expectations modulate striatal responses to feedback

The striatum plays a critical role in learning from reward, and it has been implicated in learning from performance-related feedback as well. Positive and negative performance-related feedback is known to engage the striatum during learning by eliciting a response similar to the reinforcement signal for extrinsic rewards and punishments. Feedback is an important tool used to teach new skills and promote healthful lifestyle changes, so it is important to understand how motivational contexts can modulate its effectiveness at promoting learning. While it is known that striatal responses scale with subjective factors influencing the desirability of rewards, it is less clear how expectations and goals might modulate the striatal responses to cognitive feedback during learning. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the effects of task difficulty expectations and achievement goals on feedback processing during learning. We found that individuals who scored high in normative goals, which reflect a desire to outperform other students academically, showed the strongest effects of our manipulation. High levels of normative goals were associated with greater performance gains and exaggerated striatal sensitivity to positive versus negative feedback during blocks that were expected to be more difficult. Our findings suggest that normative goals may enhance performance when difficulty expectations are high, while at the same time modulating the subjective value of feedback as processed in the striatum.