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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 14, 2009, 29(2):436-443; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4132-08.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Differential Effect of Reward and Punishment on Procedural Learning

Tobias Wächter,1,2,3 Ovidiu V. Lungu,1,2 Tao Liu,1,2 Daniel T. Willingham,4 and James Ashe1,2,3

1Brain Sciences Center, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55417, Departments of 2Neuroscience and 3Neurology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, and 4Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904

Correspondence should be addressed to James Ashe, Brain Sciences Center (11B), Veterans Affairs Medical Center, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55417. Email: ashe{at}umn.edu

Reward and punishment are potent modulators of associative learning in instrumental and classical conditioning. However, the effect of reward and punishment on procedural learning is not known. The striatum is known to be an important locus of reward-related neural signals and part of the neural substrate of procedural learning. Here, using an implicit motor learning task, we show that reward leads to enhancement of learning in human subjects, whereas punishment is associated only with improvement in motor performance. Furthermore, these behavioral effects have distinct neural substrates with the learning effect of reward being mediated through the dorsal striatum and the performance effect of punishment through the insula. Our results suggest that reward and punishment engage separate motivational systems with distinctive behavioral effects and neural substrates.

Key words: procedural learning; basal ganglia; reward; punishment; sequence; motor; motivation

Received Aug. 28, 2008; revised Nov. 19, 2008; accepted Nov. 29, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to James Ashe, Brain Sciences Center (11B), Veterans Affairs Medical Center, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55417. Email: ashe{at}umn.edu




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