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Regulating the expectation of reward via cognitive strategies

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 880–881 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Previous emotion regulation research has been successful in altering aversive emotional reactions. It is unclear, however, whether such strategies can also efficiently regulate expectations of reward arising from conditioned stimuli, which can at times be maladaptive (for example, drug cravings). Using a monetary reward-conditioning procedure with cognitive strategies, we observed attenuation in both the physiological (skin conductance) and neural correlates (striatum) of reward expectation as participants engaged in emotion regulation.

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Figure 1: Depiction of task-related events and behavioral results.
Figure 2: Neuroimaging results.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge R. Jou for assistance. This work was supported by a James S. McDonnell foundation grant to E.A.P., the Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation, and a US National Institute on Drug Abuse grant to M.R.D. (DA022998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, 101 Warren Street, Newark, 07102, New Jersey, USA

    Mauricio R Delgado

  2. Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, Room 863, New York, 10003, New York, USA

    M Meredith Gillis & Elizabeth A Phelps

Authors
  1. Mauricio R Delgado
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  2. M Meredith Gillis
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  3. Elizabeth A Phelps
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Contributions

M.R.D. and E.A.P. designed the fMRI experiment. M.M.G. and M.R.D. collected the data. M.R.D. and M.M.G. analyzed the physiological and neuroimaging data. M.R.D. and E.A.P. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth A Phelps.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Supplementary Methods and Results (PDF 353 kb)

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Delgado, M., Gillis, M. & Phelps, E. Regulating the expectation of reward via cognitive strategies. Nat Neurosci 11, 880–881 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2141

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