T193. Monetary Incentives Shape Behavioral and Neural Precision of Spatial Working Memory
Section snippets
Background
Cognitive and motivational deficits co-occur across psychiatric illnesses. To better understand how cognitive and motivational neural systems interact, we designed a novel incentivized spatial working memory (I-sWM) task for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Methods
33 healthy adults performed the I-sWM task. The possibility for monetary gain or loss was cued before each sWM trial (cued), or instructed before a block of sWM trials (non-cued). Effects of incentives on sWM networks were calculated with general linear models. We regressed blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal change with trial-by-trial sWM accuracy, or monetary feedback, to identify regions where parametrically increasing BOLD signal reflected better accuracy, or increasing money
Results
Cued gain and loss, and non-cued loss conditions improved sWM accuracy (p<0.01). For cued incentive trials, BOLD signal increased in intraparietal sulcus (IPS) during memory maintenance, and precentral sulcus (PCS) during location encoding. Effects of non-cued incentives were similar. There was increasing BOLD signal with better trial-by-trial accuracy in IPS, PCS, superior parietal and superior frontal sulci. Increasing BOLD signal in ventral striatum reflected both more money won and less
Conclusions
Our results suggest that incentives improve sWM, and IPS and PCS enhance incentivized sWM maintenance, encoding and accuracy. In the same task, specific monetary feedback was tracked by ventral striatum, habenula and insula. This study in healthy adults highlights key findings for future translation to psychiatric populations.
Supported By
Thomas P. Detre Fellowship Award
Keywords
Spatial Working Memory, Reward Processing, Motivation, Monetary Loss, Cognitive Neuroscience