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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 14, 2025

An Electrophysiology Protocol to Measure Reward Anticipation and Processing in Children

An Electrophysiology Protocol to Measure Reward Anticipation and Processing in Children

Published on: October 4, 2018

Distinct electrophysiological correlates between expected reward and risk processing.

Ya Zheng¹, Tong An¹, Qi Li¹

¹Department of Psychology, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China.

Psychophysiology

|July 17, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study reveals distinct brain responses to expected reward and risk during decision-making anticipation. Different event-related potential (ERP) components track reward and risk, showing a partial neural dissociation.

Keywords:

cue-P3 cue-RewP expected reward risk stimulus-preceding negativity

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Decision Science

Background:

Decision-making involves processing both expected reward and risk (reward variance).
Distinct neural networks may encode these parameters during anticipation.
Temporal dynamics of reward and risk processing remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural dissociation between expected reward and risk processing.
To examine the temporal dynamics of these processes using event-related potentials (ERPs).
To identify specific ERP components sensitive to reward and risk during anticipation.

Main Methods:

A card-guessing task was employed with orthogonal manipulation of expected reward and risk.
Participants (N=?) made bets based on sequential card values.
Three anticipatory ERP components were analyzed: cue-related reward positivity (cue-RewP), cue-related P3 (cue-P3), and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN).

Main Results:

The cue-RewP reflected expected reward, not risk.
The cue-P3 was sensitive to risk and, to a lesser extent, expected reward.
The SPN was sensitive to expected reward but not risk.

Conclusions:

Findings suggest a partial neural dissociation between expected reward and risk processing in the anticipatory phase.
Different ERP components differentially encode reward and risk, highlighting distinct temporal dynamics.
This research contributes to understanding the neural basis of complex decision-making under uncertainty.