Biased credit assignment in motivational learning biases arises through prefrontal influences on striatal learning

Description: Contrast related to events around outcome receipt and learning in a Motivational Go/NoGo task (Swart et al., 2017; 2018; van Nuland et al., 2020). Note that this Go/NoGo task is equiprobable (percent Go/NoGo trials is 50:50) and thus does NOT elicit strong inhibition-related activation. On each trial, a Win or Avoid cue appears; valence of the cue is not signaled but should be learned. Participants should respond during cue presentation. Response-dependent feedback follows after a jittered interval. Each cue has only one correct action (Go-left, Go-right, or NoGo), which is followed by the desired outcome 80% of the time. For Win cues, actions can lead to rewards or neutral outcomes; for Avoid cues, actions can lead to neutral outcomes or punishments. There are eight different cues, orthogonalizing cue valence (Win versus Avoid) and required action (Go versus NoGo). Feedback is probabilistic: Correct actions to Win cues lead to rewards in 80% of cases, but neutral outcomes in 20% of cases. For Avoid cues, correct actions lead to neutral outcomes in 80% of cases, but punishments in 20% of cases. For incorrect actions, these probabilities are reversed.