Reward Changes Salience in Human Vision via the Anterior Cingulate

Hickey, Clayton; Chelazzi, Leonardo; Theeuwes, Jan · 2010 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1026-10.2010

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Summary

This study investigates whether monetary reward directly alters visual salience and attentional deployment, independent of strategic, endogenous attentional control. While theories of dopamine suggest that reward enhances the perceptual representation of associated stimuli, existing literature often conflates this direct effect with strategic biases, where observers voluntarily attend to reward-predictive cues. The authors aimed to disentangle these mechanisms by determining if reward automatically biases attention toward visual features even when such bias is counterproductive to task performance. The researchers conducted three experiments involving human participants performing visual search tasks. Participants searched for a uniquely shaped target among distractors, with one distractor often possessing a unique color (a "color singleton"). Crucially, the target was defined by shape, making color task-irrelevant. In Experiment 1, participants received either high or low monetary rewards for correct responses. The design included a "predictive" condition where high reward signaled that the target and distractor colors would likely swap in the next trial, and a "non-predictive" condition where reward magnitude was unrelated to color swaps. A control experiment confirmed participants could strategically use reward cues to predict target location. Experiment 2 replicated the non-predictive design while recording electroencephalogram (EEG) data to analyze event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral results demonstrated that high-magnitude reward facilitated the processing of the color feature associated with the reward, causing attention to be automatically drawn to that color in subsequent trials. This occurred even in the predictive condition, where attending to the previously rewarded color was strategically disadvantageous because it indicated the target color would change. Participants responded slower when the colors swapped after high reward, indicating an automatic bias toward the rewarded feature that overrode strategic intentions. EEG analysis revealed that this behavioral bias was accompanied by enhanced early visual processing, specifically an increased amplitude of the lateral P1 component in visual cortex contralateral to the rewarded feature. Furthermore, source analysis indicated that the magnitude of this visual bias was predicted by the response to reward feedback in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region with strong connections to dopaminergic midbrain structures. The findings conclude that reward has a direct, automatic impact on early visual processing by increasing the salience of reward-associated features. This mechanism operates independently of volitional attentional strategies and is mediated by the anterior cingulate cortex. The study provides evidence that reward-related dopamine systems steer perception and attention automatically, challenging models that attribute reward effects solely to strategic endogenous control. This highlights an undervalued role of reward in attentional control, where motivational significance directly modulates sensory processing.

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• attention selective divided