Anderson et al., The Role of Dopamine in Value-Based Attentional Orienting

Question 1

Big picture question

Answer 1

What is the role of dopamine in attentional biases to cues signaling reward?

Question 2

Specific question

Answer 2

What is the role of dopamine in maintaining the attentional salience of reward cues even when they no longer predict reward?

Question 3

Background

Answer 3

• DA is important for learning that certain cues predict reward
• Cues signaling reward capture attention, even when not relevant to “top-down” goals

Question 4

Participants

Answer 4

20 healthy young adults

Question 5

Methods

Answer 5

Day 1: training
- taught to associate colours with the likelihood of reward
- visual search task (look for target in display of shapes, either red or green; report - horizontal or vertical? one colour predicted high probability of reward, other low)

Day 2: test attention bias
- PET data collected during two versions of a variation on the task
- separate scans: distractor present condition (in 50% of trials, one shape that was not the target was in red or green, but there was no reward) and distractor absent condition (no salient distractors)

Question 6

How was data analyzed?

Answer 6

Amount of dopamine available was compared between conditions (reward cues vs no reward cues) by comparing PET activation

ie, PET was used to measure dopamine availability

Question 7

Independent Variables

Answer 7

Training: different levels of reward associated with a specific colour

Test scan: distractor present - rewarding distractor absent, high reward distractor present, low reward distractor present
Test scan: no distractors present

Region of interest (10 looked at)

Question 8

Dependent variables

Answer 8

Reaction time in indicating bar orientation

PET measures of DA availability (raclopride concentrations, or “non-displacable binding potential”

Question 9

Measure of incentive salience that the authors were interested in

Answer 9

Value-driven attentional capture (VDAC)
- form of reward-biased attention

• value-driven - you can’t help but pay attention to the cue that you’ve learned to associate with reward (like bottom-up attention)
• attentional capture - not relevant to task goals but you can’t help but pay attention to it