Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Long-term spatial contextual memories are a rich source of predictions about the likely locations of relevant objects in the environment and should enable tuning of neural processing of unfolding events to optimize perception and action. Of particular importance is whether and how the reward outcome of past events can impact perception. We combined behavioral measures with recordings of brain activity with high temporal resolution to test whether the previous reward outcome associated with a memory could modulate the impact of memory-based biases on perception, and if so, the level(s) at which visual neural processing is biased by reward-associated memory-guided attention. Data showed that past rewards potentiate the effects of spatial memories upon the discrimination of target objects embedded within complex scenes starting from early perceptual stages. We show that a single reward outcome of learning impacts on how we perceive events in our complex environments.

Original publication

DOI

10.1162/jocn_a_00314

Type

Journal article

Journal

J Cogn Neurosci

Publication Date

02/2013

Volume

25

Pages

245 - 257

Keywords

Adult, Anticipation, Psychological, Attention, Discrimination (Psychology), Evoked Potentials, Visual, Female, Humans, Male, Memory, Long-Term, Mental Recall, Orientation, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Reward, Space Perception, Visual Perception, Young Adult