Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.
Department of Neurology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2021 Oct 1;42(14):4555-4567. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25564. Epub 2021 Jun 26.
Motivational influences on cognitive control play an important role in shaping human behavior. Cognitive facilitation through motivators such as prospective reward or punishment is thought to depend on regions from the dopaminergic mesocortical network, primarily the ventral tegmental area (VTA), inferior frontal junction (IFJ), and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). However, how interactions between these regions relate to motivated control remains elusive. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to investigate effective connectivity between left IFJ, ACC, and VTA in a task-switching paradigm comprising three distinct motivational conditions (prospective monetary reward or punishment and a control condition). We found that while prospective punishment significantly facilitated switching between tasks on a behavioral level, interactions between IFJ, ACC, and VTA were characterized by modulations through prospective reward but not punishment. Our DCM results show that IFJ and VTA modulate ACC activity in parallel rather than by interaction to serve task demands in reward-based cognitive control. Our findings further demonstrate that prospective reward and punishment differentially affect neural control mechanisms to initiate decision-making.
动机对认知控制的影响在塑造人类行为方面起着重要作用。人们认为，通过激励因素（如预期的奖励或惩罚）来促进认知，这取决于多巴胺能中脑皮质网络的区域，主要是腹侧被盖区（VTA）、下额前回连接区（IFJ）和前扣带皮层（ACC）。然而，这些区域之间的相互作用如何与有动机的控制相关仍然难以捉摸。在本项功能磁共振成像研究中，我们使用动态因果建模（DCM）来研究任务切换范式中左 IFJ、ACC 和 VTA 之间的有效连接，该范式包含三个不同的动机条件（预期的金钱奖励或惩罚和控制条件）。我们发现，虽然预期的惩罚在行为水平上显著促进了任务之间的转换，但 IFJ、ACC 和 VTA 之间的相互作用的特征是通过预期的奖励而不是惩罚进行调节。我们的 DCM 结果表明，IFJ 和 VTA 平行地调节 ACC 的活动，而不是通过相互作用来满足基于奖励的认知控制的任务需求。我们的研究结果进一步表明，预期的奖励和惩罚会以不同的方式影响神经控制机制来启动决策。
