Skip to main content

Umbrella menu

  • SfN.org
  • eNeuro
  • The Journal of Neuroscience
  • Neuronline
  • BrainFacts.org

Main menu

  • HOME
  • CONTENT
    • Early Release
    • Current Issue
    • Issue Archive
    • Video Archive
    • Collections
  • ALERTS
  • FOR AUTHORS
    • Preparing a Manuscript
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Fees
    • Journal Club
    • eLetters
    • Submit
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • ABOUT
    • Overview
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertise
    • For the Media
    • Permissions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Feedback
  • SfN.org
  • eNeuro
  • The Journal of Neuroscience
  • Neuronline
  • BrainFacts.org

User menu

  • Log in
  • Subscribe
  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
Journal of Neuroscience
  • Log in
  • Subscribe
  • My alerts
Journal of Neuroscience

Advanced Search

Submit a Manuscript
  • HOME
  • CONTENT
    • Early Release
    • Current Issue
    • Issue Archive
    • Video Archive
    • Collections
  • ALERTS
  • FOR AUTHORS
    • Preparing a Manuscript
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Fees
    • Journal Club
    • eLetters
    • Submit
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • ABOUT
    • Overview
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertise
    • For the Media
    • Permissions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Feedback
PreviousNext
Research Articles, Behavioral/Cognitive

Motor Cortex Excitability Reflects the Subjective Value of Reward and Mediates Its Effects on Incentive-Motivated Performance

Joseph K. Galaro, Pablo Celnik and Vikram S. Chib
Journal of Neuroscience 13 February 2019, 39 (7) 1236-1248; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1254-18.2018
Joseph K. Galaro
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205,
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Pablo Celnik
2Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21287, and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Pablo Celnik
Vikram S. Chib
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, 3Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 21205
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Vikram S. Chib
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

Abstract

Performance-based incentives tend to increase an individual's motivation, resulting in enhancements in behavioral output. While much work has focused on understanding how the brain's reward circuitry influences incentive-motivated performance, fewer studies have investigated how such reward representations act on the motor system. Here we measured motor cortical excitability with transcranial magnetic stimulation while female and male human participants performed a motoric incentive motivation task for prospective monetary gains and losses. We found that individuals' performance increased for increasing prospective gains and losses. While motor cortical excitability appeared insensitive to prospective loss, temporal features of motor cortical excitability for prospective gains were modulated by an independent measure of an individual's subjective preferences for incentive (i.e., loss aversion). Those individuals that were more loss averse had a greater motor cortical sensitivity to prospective gain, closer to movement onset. Critically, behavioral sensitivity to incentive and motor cortical sensitivity to prospective gains were both predicted by loss aversion. Furthermore, causal modeling indicated that motor cortical sensitivity to incentive mediated the relationship between subjective preferences for incentive and behavioral sensitivity to incentive. Together, our findings suggest that motor cortical activity integrates information about the subjective value of reward to invigorate incentive-motivated performance.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Increasing incentives tend to increase motivation and effort. Using a motoric incentive motivation task and transcranial magnetic stimulation, we studied the motor cortical mechanisms responsible for incentive-motivated motor performance. We provide experimental evidence that motor cortical sensitivity to incentive mediates the relationship between subjective preferences for incentive and incentive-motivated performance. These results indicate that, rather than simply being a reflection of motor output, motor cortical physiology integrates information about reward value to motivate performance.

  • incentive
  • motivation
  • motor excitability
  • transcranial magnetic stimulation
View Full Text

Member Log In

Sign in with your SFN login

If you have an SfN.org account and DO NOT know
your username and/or password

If you DO NOT have an SfN membership

Log in through your institution

If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.

Pay Per Article - You may access this article (from the computer you are currently using) for 1 day for US$35.00

Regain Access - You can regain access to a recent Pay per Article purchase if your access period has not yet expired.

Back to top

In this issue

The Journal of Neuroscience: 39 (7)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 39, Issue 7
13 Feb 2019
  • Table of Contents
  • Table of Contents (PDF)
  • About the Cover
  • Index by author
  • Advertising (PDF)
  • Ed Board (PDF)
Email

Thank you for sharing this Journal of Neuroscience article.

NOTE: We request your email address only to inform the recipient that it was you who recommended this article, and that it is not junk mail. We do not retain these email addresses.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Motor Cortex Excitability Reflects the Subjective Value of Reward and Mediates Its Effects on Incentive-Motivated Performance
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from Journal of Neuroscience
(Your Name) thought you would be interested in this article in Journal of Neuroscience.
Print
View Full Page PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Citation Tools
Motor Cortex Excitability Reflects the Subjective Value of Reward and Mediates Its Effects on Incentive-Motivated Performance
Joseph K. Galaro, Pablo Celnik, Vikram S. Chib
Journal of Neuroscience 13 February 2019, 39 (7) 1236-1248; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1254-18.2018

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Respond to this article

Share
Motor Cortex Excitability Reflects the Subjective Value of Reward and Mediates Its Effects on Incentive-Motivated Performance
Joseph K. Galaro, Pablo Celnik, Vikram S. Chib
Journal of Neuroscience 13 February 2019, 39 (7) 1236-1248; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1254-18.2018
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Introduction
    • Materials and Methods
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & Data
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

Keywords

  • incentive
  • motivation
  • motor excitability
  • transcranial magnetic stimulation

Responses to this article

Respond to this article

Jump to comment:

No eLetters have been published for this article.

Related Articles

Cited By...

More in this TOC Section

Research Articles

  • Interaction of taste and place coding in the hippocampus
  • Going with the flow: the neural mechanisms underlying illusions of complex-flow motion
  • Stimulus-driven brain rhythms within the alpha band: The attentional-modulation conundrum
Show more Research Articles

Behavioral/Cognitive

  • Stimulus-driven brain rhythms within the alpha band: The attentional-modulation conundrum
  • Post-encoding Amygdala-Visuosensory Coupling Is Associated with Negative Memory Bias in Healthy Young Adults
  • Neural Mechanisms of Emotion Regulation Moderate the Predictive Value of Affective and Value-Related Brain Responses to Persuasive Messages
Show more Behavioral/Cognitive
  • Home
  • Alerts
  • Visit Society for Neuroscience on Facebook
  • Follow Society for Neuroscience on Twitter
  • Follow Society for Neuroscience on LinkedIn
  • Visit Society for Neuroscience on Youtube
  • Follow our RSS feeds

Content

  • Early Release
  • Current Issue
  • Issue Archive
  • Collections

Information

  • For Authors
  • For Advertisers
  • For the Media
  • For Subscribers

About

  • About the Journal
  • Editorial Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Feedback
(JNeurosci logo)
(SfN logo)

Copyright © 2019 by the Society for Neuroscience.

JNeurosci   Print ISSN: 0270-6474   Online ISSN: 1529-2401