Neural Correlates of Value-Driven Spatial Attention

Reward learning has been shown to habitually guide spatial attention to regions of a scene. However, the neural mechanisms that support this bias in spatial orienting are unknown. In the present study, participants learned to orient to a particular quadrant of a scene (high-value quadrant) to maximize monetary gains. This learning was scene-specific, with the high-value quadrant varying across different scenes. During a subsequent test phase, participants were faster at identifying a target if it appeared in the high-value quadrant (valid), and initial saccades were more likely to be made to the high-value quadrant. fMRI analyses during the test phase revealed learning-dependent priority signals in the bilateral caudate tail and superior colliculus, frontal eye field, substantia nigra, and insula, paralleling findings concerning feature-based value-driven attention. In addition, ventral regions typically associated with scene selective and spatial information processing, including the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, and temporo-occipital cortex, were also implicated. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into the neural architecture subserving value-driven attention, both extending our understanding of nodes in the attention network previously implicated in feature-based value-driven attention and identifying a ventral network of brain regions implicated in rewards influence on scene-dependent spatial orienting.