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Dualism has long been part of human sciences, including psychology and its sub-discipline of motivation. In psychology, such dualism is reflected in the rationalism-empiricism dichotomy. This dichotomy has resulted in two seemingly contradictory perspectives, including empiricism and rationalism. From empiricism perspective, the primary contact between subject and object is the passive reception of inputs from the environment. From rationalism perspective, the primary contact is through the match between conceptual forms and empirical observations. Relying on the notion of "being-in-the-world", activity theories reconcile these discrepancies by stressing the role of individual's activity in the contact between individual and the world. Similarly, in the motivation literature, such duality is highlighted by the dissection of motivation into intrinsic and extrinsic categories. It has resulted in three contrasting streams on the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The first stream by reinforcement theories argues that these two motivational mechanisms act in an additive way. The second stream by undermining theories posits that they interact in a negative way. Yet, the third stream by contingency theories postulates that the simultaneous effect of these motivational mechanisms depends on reward salience. These theoretical streams either implicitly or explicitly give priority to one type of motivation over the other. Emphasizing a dialectical stance, motivational congruence theory gives equal weight to both types of motivation. It stipulates that the perceived congruence between motivational mechanisms and context determines overall motivation and performance. The theory goes beyond the dualistic approach in motivation and resolves discrepancies that have long afflicted the literature.

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Reward processing is vital for learning and survival, and can be indexed using the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that is larger for rewards than losses. Prior work suggests that heightened motivation to obtain reward, as well as greater reward value, is associated with an enhanced RewP. However, the extent to which internal and external factors modulate neural responses to rewards, and whether such neural responses motivate reward-seeking behavior, remains unclear. The present study investigated whether the degree to which a reward is salient to an individual's current motivational state modulates the RewP, and whether the RewP predicts motivated behaviors, in a sample of 133 women. To elicit the RewP, participants completed a forced-choice food reward guessing task. Data were also collected on food-related behaviors (i.e., type of food chosen, consumption of the food reward) and motivational salience factors (i.e., self-reported hunger, time since last meal, and subjective "liking" of food reward). Results showed that hungrier participants displayed an enhanced RewP compared to less hungry individuals. Further, self-reported snack liking interacted with RewP magnitude to predict behavior, such that when participants reported low levels of snack liking, those with a smaller RewP were more likely to consume their snacks than those with a larger RewP. Our data suggest that food-related motivational state may increase neural sensitivity to food reward in young women, and that neural markers of reward sensitivity might interact with subjective reward liking to predict real-world eating behavior.

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This perspective article provides an overview of the impact of mindfulness meditation (MM) on social and moral behavior. In mindfulness research, prosocial behavior has been operationalized as helping behavior, altruistic redistribution of funds, reparative behavior, or monetary donation. Studies concerning moral behavior are still scarce. Despite inconsistent evidence, several studies found a beneficial effect of mindfulness on prosocial outcomes (i.e., a higher propensity to spend or give away money for the sake of other individuals). However, since the employed tasks were reward-based, participants' decisions also directly affected their own payoff by reducing it. Crucially, MM also affects self-control circuitry and reduces reward-seeking behaviors and reward salience by making rewards less tempting. We have discussed evidence suggesting how challenging it may be to dissociate the specific weight of enhanced other-oriented motivation from one of the decreased monetary reward salience in explaining meditators' behavior. Future higher-quality studies are needed to address this open issue.

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One of the challenges in the motivation literature is examining the simultaneous effect of different motivational mechanisms on overall motivation and performance. The motivational congruence theory addresses this by stipulating that different motivational mechanisms can reinforce each other if they have similar effects on the perceived locus of causality. Reward salience and choice are two motivational mechanisms which their joint effects have been long debated. Built upon the motivational congruence effect, a recent empirical study affirms that a salient reward in a condition characterized by lack of choice and a non-salient reward in a condition characterized by provision of choice both increase overall motivation and performance. In this study, we examine the effect of reward salience and choice on overall motivation and performance in a controlling context, an effect which has not been studied before. A 2 (choice: present, absent) × 3 (reward: salient, non-salient, none) factorial design was conducted to examine research hypotheses. The results show that under controlling conditions, salient reward improves overall motivation and performance compared to non-salient and no-reward conditions.

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BACKGROUND: The two key mechanisms affected by internet gaming disorder (IGD) are cognitive and reward processing. Despite their significance, little is known about neurophysiological features as determined using resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) source functional connectivity (FC). METHODS: We compared resting-state EEG source FC within the default mode network (DMN) and reward/salience network (RSN) between patients with IGD and healthy controls (HCs) to identify neurophysiological markers associated with cognitive and reward processing. A total of 158 young male adults (79 patients with IGD and 79 HCs) were included, and the source FC of the DMN and RSN in five spectral bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) were assessed. RESULTS: Patients with IGD showed increased theta, alpha, and beta connectivity within the DMN between the orbitofrontal cortex and parietal regions compared with HCs. In terms of RSN, patients with IGD exhibited elevated alpha and beta connectivity between the anterior cingulate gyrus and temporal regions compared with HCs. Furthermore, patients with IGD showed negative correlations between the severity of IGD symptoms and/or weekly gaming time and theta and alpha connectivity within the DMN and theta, alpha, and beta connectivity within the RSN. However, the duration of IGD was not associated with EEG source FC. CONCLUSIONS: Hyper-connectivities within the DMN and RSN may be considered potential state markers associated with symptom severity and gaming time in IGD.

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We provide a unifying translational framework that can be used to synthesize extant lines of human laboratory research in four neurofunctional domains that underlie the co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress and substance use disorders (PTSD+SUD). We draw upon the Alcohol and Addiction Research Domain Criteria (AARDOC) to include executive functioning, negative emotionality, reward, and added social cognition from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria into our framework. We review research findings across each of the four domains, emphasizing human experimental studies in PTSD, SUD, and PTSD+SUD for each domain. We also discuss the implications of research findings for treatment development by considering new ways of conceptualizing risk factors and outcomes at the level of the individual patient, which will enhance treatment matching and advance innovations in intervention.

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Pathology of reward processing is a major clinical feature of stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders including depression. Several dimensions of reward processing can be impacted, including reward valuation/salience, learning, expectancy and effort valuation. To establish the causal relationships between stress, brain changes, and reward processing pathologies, valid animal models are essential. Here, we present mouse experiments investigating behavioral effects of chronic social stress (CSS) in association learning tests of gustatory reward salience and effort valuation. The reward salience test (RST) comprised Pavlovian pairing of a tone with gustatory reward. The effort valuation test (EVT) comprised operant responding for gustatory reinforcement on a progressive ratio schedule (PRS). All testing was conducted with mice at 100% baseline body weight (BBW). In one experiment, mice underwent 15-day CSS or control handling (CON) and testing was conducted using sucrose pellets. In the RST on days 16-17, CSS mice made fewer feeder responses and had a longer tone response latency, than CON mice. In a shallow EVT on days 19-20, CSS mice attained a lower final ratio than CON mice. In a second CSS experiment, mice underwent CSS or CON and testing was conducted with chocolate pellets and in the presence of standard diet (low effort/low reward). In the RST on days 16-18, CSS mice made fewer feeder responses and had a longer tone response latency, than CON mice. In a steep EVT on days 19-20, CSS and CON mice attained less pellets than in the RST, and CSS mice attained a lower final ratio than CON mice. At day 21, blood levels of glucose and the satiety adipokine leptin were similar in CSS and CON mice. Therefore, CSS leads to consistent reductions in reward salience and effort valuation in tests based on association learning. These reward pathology models are being applied to identify the underlying neurobiology and putative molecular targets for therapeutic pharmacology.

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Visual attentional selection is influenced by the value of objects. Previous studies have demonstrated that reward-associated items lead to rapid distraction and associated behavioral costs, which are difficult to override with top-down control. However, it has not been determined whether a perceptually competitive environment could render the reward-driven distraction more susceptible to top-down suppression. Here, we trained both genders of human subjects to associate two orientations with high and low magnitudes of reward. After training, we collected fMRI data while the subjects performed a categorical visual search task. The item in the reward-associated orientation served as the distractor, and the relative physical salience between the target and distractor was carefully controlled to modulate the degree of perceptual competition. The behavioral results showed faster searches in the presence of high, relative to low, reward-associated distractors. However, this effect was evident only if the physical salience of the distractor was higher than that of the target, indicating a context-dependent suppression effect of reward salience that relied on high perceptual competition. By analyzing the fMRI data in primary visual cortex, we found that the behavioral pattern of results could be predicted by the suppressed channel responses tuned to the reward-associated orientation in the distractor location, accompanied by increased responses in the midbrain dopaminergic region. Our results suggest that the learned salience of a reward plays a flexible role in solving perceptual competition, enabling the neural system to adaptively modulate the perceptual representation for behavioral optimization.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The predictiveness principle in learning theory suggests that the stimulus with high predictability of reward receives priority in attentional selection. This selection bias leads to difficulties in changing approach behaviors, and thus becomes an important factor related to psychiatric disorders with attentional deficits. Here, we demonstrated that such principle is adaptively implemented in attentional suppression in visual search. We showed that the learned salience induced the suppression of the reward-associated distractor if its competition with the target was strong and could not be readily solved. This behavioral pattern was accompanied by increased midbrain fMRI activity and weakened sensory representation of the reward-associated distractor in V1. Our findings provided direct evidence that our brain flexibly uses learned regularities in attentional control.

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Although valuable objects are attractive in nature, people often encounter situations where they would prefer to avoid such distraction while focusing on the task goal. Contrary to the typical effect of attentional capture by a reward-associated item, we provide evidence for a facilitation effect derived from the active suppression of a high reward-associated stimulus when cuing its identity as distractor before the display of search arrays. Selection of the target is shown to be significantly faster when the distractors were in high reward-associated colour than those in low reward-associated or non-rewarded colours. This behavioural reward effect was associated with two neural signatures before the onset of the search display: the increased frontal theta oscillation and the strengthened top-down modulation from frontal to anterior temporal regions. The former suggests an enhanced working memory representation for the reward-associated stimulus and the increased need for cognitive control to override Pavlovian bias, whereas the latter indicates that the boost of inhibitory control is realized through a frontal top-down mechanism. These results suggest a mechanism in which the enhanced working memory representation of a reward-associated feature is integrated with task demands to modify attentional priority during active distractor suppression and benefit behavioural performance.

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