Reward-Related Suppression of Neural Activity in Macaque Visual Area V4.

ABSTRACT: In order for organisms to survive, they need to detect rewarding stimuli, for example, food or a mate, in a complex environment with many competing stimuli. These rewarding stimuli should be detected even if they are nonsalient or irrelevant to the current goal. The value-driven theory of attentional selection proposes that this detection takes place through reward-associated stimuli automatically engaging attentional mechanisms. But how this is achieved in the brain is not very well understood. Here, we investigate the effect of differential reward on the multiunit activity in visual area V4 of monkeys performing a perceptual judgment task. Surprisingly, instead of finding reward-related increases in neural responses to the perceptual target, we observed a large suppression at the onset o

SUBMITTER: Shapcott KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7391271 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature