Effective connectivity underlying reward-based executive control

Abstract

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.