Monetary Incentives Modulate Feedback-related Brain Activity

Previous research has shown that feedback evaluation is sensitive to monetary incentive. We investigated whether this sensitivity is driven by motivational salience (the difference between both rewarding and punishing events versus neutral events) or by motivational valence (the difference between rewarding and punishing events). Fifty-seven participants performed a monetary incentive delay task under a gain context, a loss context, and a neutral context with their electroencephalogram recorded. During the time domain, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) showed a motivational salience effect whereas the P3 displayed a reward valence effect. During the time-frequency domain, we observed a motivational salience effect for phase-locked theta power regardless of performance feedback, but a reward valence effect for non-phase-locked theta power in response to unsuccessful feedback. Moreover, we found a reward valence effect for phase-locked delta. These findings thus suggest that the affective modulation on feedback evaluation can be driven either by motivational valence or by motivational salience, which depends on the temporal dynamics (the FRN vs. the P3), the frequency dynamics (theta vs. delta power), as well as the phase dynamics (evoked vs. induced power).