What can the monetary incentive delay task tell us about the neural processing of reward and punishment?

Abstract

Since its introduction in 2000, the monetary incentive delay (MID) task has been used extensively to investigate changes in neural activity in response to the processing of reward and punishment in healthy, but also in clinical populations. Typically, the MID task requires an individual to react to a target stimulus presented after an incentive cue to win or to avoid losing the indicated reward. In doing so, this paradigm allows the detailed examination of different stages of reward processing like reward prediction, anticipation, outcome processing, and consump-tion as well as the processing of tasks under different reward conditions. This review gives an overview of different utilizations of the MID task by outlining the neuronal processes involved in distinct aspects of human reward processing, such as anticipation versus consumption, reward versus punishment, and, with a special focus, reward-based learning processes. Furthermore, literature on specific influences on reward processing like behavioral, clinical and developmental influences, is reviewed, describing current findings and possible future directions.