Where is the money? Dynamics in feedback processing and attention during spatial probabilistic learning

Abstract

Learned feature-based stimulus-reward-associations can modulate behavior and the underlying neural processing of information. In our study, we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying learning of spatial stimulus-reward-associations. Participants performed a probabilistic spatial reward-learning task that required participants, within 40 trials, to learn which out of four locations on a computer screen yielded the most gain-feedback when chosen. Our behavioral findings show that participants learned to choose which location was most rewarding. Those findings were paralleled by significant amplitude differences in event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the presentation of loss and gain feedback; the amplitude of the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was more negative in response to loss feedback compared to gain feedback, but showed no modulation by trial-number. On the other hand, the late positive component (LPC), became larger in response to losses as the learning-set progressed, but smaller in response to gains. Additionally, immediately following feedback presentation, brain activity in the visual cortex - read out through alpha frequency oscillations measured over occipital sites - was predictive of the amplitude of the N2pc ERP component, a marker of spatial attention orienting, observed on the next trial. Taken together, we elucidated neurocognitive dynamics underlying feedback processing in spatial reward learning, and the subsequent effects that spatial stimulus-reward association learning have on spatial attention.