title: Reward breaks through center-surround inhibition via anterior insula.
abstract: Focusing attention on a target creates a center-surround inhibition such that distractors located close to the target do not capture attention. Recent research showed that a distractor can break through this surround inhibition when associated with reward. However, the brain basis for this reward-based attention is unclear. In this fMRI study, we presented a distractor associated with high or low reward at different distances from the target. Behaviorally the low-reward distractor did not capture attention and thus did not cause interference, whereas the high-reward distractor captured attention only when located near the target. Neural activity in extrastriate cortex mirrored the behavioral pattern. A comparison between the high-reward and the low-reward distractors presented near the target (i.e., reward-based attention) and a comparison between the high-reward distractors located near and far from the target (i.e., spatial attention) revealed a common frontoparietal network, including inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal sulcus as well as the visual cortex. Reward-based attention specifically activated the anterior insula (AI). Dynamic causal modelling showed that reward modulated the connectivity from AI to the frontoparietal network but not the connectivity from the frontoparietal network to the visual cortex. Across participants, the reward-based attentional effect could be predicted both by the activity in AI and by the changes of spontaneous functional connectivity between AI and ventral striatum before and after reward association. These results suggest that AI encodes reward-based salience and projects it to the stimulus-driven attentional network, which enables the reward-associated distractor to break through the surround inhibition in the visual cortex.
authors.affiliation: Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lihui
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hongbo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1081 BT, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Theeuwes
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Embedded System and Service Computing (Ministry of Education), Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Embedded System and Service Computing (Ministry of Education), Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Embedded System and Service Computing (Ministry of Education), Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China.
authors.forename: Changjun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.|Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.|Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.|PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D017352:Echo-Planar Imaging; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007600:Judgment; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: anterior insula; dynamic causal modeling; fMRI; resting-state fMRI; reward; reward-based attention; stimulus-driven attention