title: Between thoughts and actions: motivationally salient cues invigorate mental action in the human brain.
abstract: The maintenance of goal-directed behavior relies upon a cascade of covert mental actions including motor imagery and planning. Here we investigated how cues imbued with motivational salience can invigorate motor imagery networks preceding action. We adapted the Pavlovian-to-instrumental (PIT) paradigm to explore this by substituting motor action with motor imagery. Thus, reward was contingent upon a given level of imagery-induced neural activity using real-time fMRI. We found that the concomitant presentation of reward-related cues during motor imagery not only enhanced neural responses in motivational centers (ventral striatum and extended amygdala) but also exerted a motivational effect in the imagery network itself. Moreover, functional connectivity between ventral striatum (but not extended amygdala) and motor cortex was heightened during imagery in the presence of the reward-related cue. The concurrent activation of "value" and "action" networks may illuminate the neural process that links motivational cues to desires and urges to obtain goals.
authors: Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA.
authors: Avi
authors: A
authors: Mendelsohn
authors: Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, 7610001 Rehovot, Israel.
authors: Alex
authors: A
authors: Pine
authors: Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA. Electronic address: daniela.schiller@mssm.edu.
authors: Daniela
authors: D
authors: Schiller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012201:Reward; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen