— Motivated Cognition Lab

Archive
April, 2016 Monthly archive

In collaboration with Laura Battelli’s lab, first time we’ve used a stimulation technique…

van Koningsbruggen, Ficarella, Battelli, & Hickey (in press). Transcranial random noise stimulation potentiates value-driven attentional capture. Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Reward feedback following visual search causes the visual characteristics of targets to become salient and attention-drawing, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying this value-driven capture effect. Here we use transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) to demonstrate that such reward potentiation involves induced plasticity in visual cortex. Human participants completed a feature-search reward-learning task involving the selection of a red or green colored target presented among distractors of various color. Each correct trial garnered reward and the magnitude of reward was determined by the color of the target. Three groups completed this task: two groups received tRNS over either occipital or frontal cortex, and the third group received sham stimulation as a control. In a subsequent test phase of the experiment participants searched for a unique shape presented among colored distractors. During the test phase no tRNS was applied and no reward was available. However, in some trials a single distractor had color matching that associated with reward during training. Search for the target was impacted by the presence of such reward-associated distractors in the occipital stimulation group, demonstrating that plasticity in visual cortex contributes to value-driven attentional capture.

 

 

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May 17th, 5:15pm
Session: Attention: Reward, emotion, motivation

vss2016abstract

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The call for applications to the cimec PhD school has been released.

Deadline is May 10th, 2016, at 4pm.

If you are interested in applying, feel free to email Clayton with questions.

 

 

 

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