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1. Flexible control as surrogate reward or dynamic reward maximization

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105262  

   Liljeholm, Mimi ( December 2022 , Cognition)
2. The Interplay Between Reward-Relevant Life Events and Trait Reward Sensitivity in Neural Responses to Reward Cues

   https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211056627  

   Chat, Iris Ka-Yi ; Dunning, Erin E. ; Bart, Corinne P. ; Carroll, Ann L. ; Grehl, Mora M. ; Damme, Katherine S. F. ; Abramson, Lyn Y. ; Nusslock, Robin ; Alloy, Lauren B. ( December 2021 , Clinical Psychological Science)

   The reward-hypersensitivity model posits that trait reward hypersensitivity should elicit hyper/hypo-approach motivation following exposure to recent life events that activate (goal striving and goal attainment) or deactivate (goal failure) the reward system, respectively. To test these hypotheses, we had 87 young adults with high trait reward (HRew) sensitivity or moderate trait reward (MRew) sensitivity report frequency of life events via the Life Event Interview. Brain activation was assessed during the functional MRI monetary-incentive-delay task. Greater exposure to goal-striving events was associated with higher nucleus accumbens (NAc) reward anticipation among HRew participants and lower orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) reward anticipation among MRew participants. Greater exposure to goal-failure events was associated with higher NAc and OFC reward anticipation only among HRew participants. This study demonstrated different neural reward anticipation (but not outcome) following reward-relevant events for HRew individuals compared with MRew individuals. Trait reward sensitivity and reward-relevant life events may jointly modulate reward-related brain function, which has implications for understanding psychopathology.

    

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3. Causal Confusion and Reward Misidentification in Preference-Based Reward Learning

   J. Tien, D. Brown ( January 2023 , International Conference on Learning Representations)
4. The ventral striatum dissociates information expectation, reward anticipation, and reward receipt

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911778117  

   Filimon, Flavia ; Nelson, Jonathan D. ; Sejnowski, Terrence J. ; Sereno, Martin I. ; Cottrell, Garrison W. ( June 2020 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Do dopaminergic reward structures represent the expected utility of information similarly to a reward? Optimal experimental design models from Bayesian decision theory and statistics have proposed a theoretical framework for quantifying the expected value of information that might result from a query. In particular, this formulation quantifies the value of information before the answer to that query is known, in situations where payoffs are unknown and the goal is purely epistemic: That is, to increase knowledge about the state of the world. Whether and how such a theoretical quantity is represented in the brain is unknown. Here we use an event-related functional MRI (fMRI) task design to disentangle information expectation, information revelation and categorization outcome anticipation, and response-contingent reward processing in a visual probabilistic categorization task. We identify a neural signature corresponding to the expectation of information, involving the left lateral ventral striatum. Moreover, we show a temporal dissociation in the activation of different reward-related regions, including the nucleus accumbens, medial prefrontal cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex, during information expectation versus reward-related processing.

    

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5. Inferring Probabilistic Reward Machines from Non-Markovian Reward Signals for Reinforcement Learning

   Dohmen, T. ; Topper, N. ; Atia, G. ; Beckus, A. ; Trivedi, A. ; Velasquez, A. ( January 2022 , International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling)