Sensation-seeking (SS) behavior is linked to neural mechanisms like novelty detection and reward processing. In our study, we explored how individual differences in SS traits affect memory processing, focusing on novelty detection and its interplay with reward and arousal across three experiments. Experiments 1-3 test novelty detection, incentive valence, and incentive magnitude, respectively. In Experiment 1, high sensation seekers (HSSs) and low sensation seekers (LSSs) had similar accuracy in recognizing words, but HSSs responded faster to novel stimuli, suggesting they detect new information more quickly. In Experiment 2, HSSs showed consistent memory for gain, loss, and neutral conditions, while LSSs remembered gain and loss stimuli better than neutral ones. Experiment 3 reinforced these patterns: HSSs showed uniform memory regardless of gain or loss magnitude, implying their higher arousal threshold reduces the emotional impact of both gains and losses. LSSs, however, remembered high-magnitude stimuli better than low-magnitude ones in both gain and loss conditions, suggesting their memory is calibrated to outcome intensity rather than emotional valence. Together, these results suggest sensation-seeking hinges on a recalibrated arousal system, where HSSs demand greater stimulation to register impact, dulling emotional intensity in memory. This offers new insights into how sensation-seeking traits work cognitively.

BACKGROUND:Emotion labeling (EL) is an emotion regulation strategy. Emotion intensity is an important factor affecting the effectiveness of emotion regulation. This study aimed to explore the influence of emotional intensity on the immediate and lasting effects of EL by EEG technology. METHODS:This experiment employed a 2 (emotion intensity: high, low) × 3 (task: EL, content labeling, viewing) within-subject design, including two sessions. In the first session, participants completed the label selection task (measuring the immediate effect), and the picture was presented again after each trial of the label selection task (measuring short-term lasting effect). After the first session was completely over, the second session began in which the pictures presented in the first session were shown for third time (measuring long-term lasting effect). The valid data from thirty participants was collected by NeuroScan and analyzed offline using EEGLAB. RESULTS:Under low-intensity condition, the alpha ERD degree was greater in the EL than in the viewing condition during the label selection phase. However, at the short-interval image re-presentation phase, the alpha ERD degree was smaller under the EL-history condition than under the viewing-history and content labeling-history conditions. In the long-interval image re-presentation phase, the LPP of high-intensity negative pictures was more positive under the EL-history than under the viewing-history condition, while the LPP of low-intensity negative pictures was smaller under the EL-history than under the viewing-history condition, showing different long-term effects. CONCLUSIONS:EL is a beneficial emotion regulation strategy under low-intensity emotions, but not under high-intensity emotions.

Previous research has shown that favorable monetary outcomes relative to others enhance neural responses; however, these paradigms often confound the subjective utility of social comparison with absolute reward magnitude. It remains unclear how performance-based social comparisons modulate an individual's self-efficacy and the subsequent effort mobilization. To address this gap, we conducted behavioral (N = 32) and electrophysiological (N = 34) experiments using a self-paced effortful task with downward/upward social comparison feedback. Computational modeling and multilevel mediation analyses revealed that downward (vs. upward) feedback dynamically updated self-efficacy, which fully mediated subsequent effort mobilization. Electrophysiological results showed stronger neural responses to downward versus upward feedback. Critically, downward comparison enhanced preparatory markers for the next round, including the contingent negative variation (CNV) and cue-beta power. Moreover, higher self-efficacy predicted more negative-going CNV potentials. These findings demonstrate that performance-based comparisons dynamically regulate self-efficacy, shaping both neural preparation and effort allocation in goal-directed behavior.

Although anticipating rewards and punishments facilitates behavioral performance, the role of controllability in shaping the integrative effects of these incentives remains unclear. To address this gap, we conducted two experiments using the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task and electroencephalography (EEG) recordings, aiming to investigate how controllability influences the effects of reward and punishment information on behavioral responses and their underlying neural mechanisms. In both experiments, the procedure followed a consistent structure: a cue indicating the reward and punishment condition was presented first, after which participants completed a task requiring fast and accurate responses, with feedback delivered afterward. In Experiment 1, reward delivery was contingent on participants' task performance, whereas punishment was delivered randomly. In contrast, Experiment 2 tied punishment delivery to performance, while reward was delivered randomly. Behaviorally, reaction times were significantly faster when participants anticipated controllable incentives-specifically, rewards in Experiment 1 and punishments in Experiment 2-without sacrificing response accuracy. For event-related potentials (ERPs), cue-related components (cue-N2, cue-P3, contingent negative variation [CNV], pre-feedback stimulus-preceding negativity [SPN]) showed consistent modulation by controllable incentives across both experiments. Additionally, the CNV was also influenced by uncontrollable rewards in Experiment 2. Results for the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and feedback-P3 consistently supported the salience prediction error account: outcomes involving reward (vs. no-reward) and punishment (vs. no-punishment) elicited more positive amplitudes. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that individuals are sensitive to both reward and punishment information, with heightened sensitivity to outcomes that are controllable, as reflected in both behavioral performance and neural activity.

Reward and emotion are tightly intertwined, yet their interaction remains underexplored. The present study employed an adapted monetary incentive delay (MID) paradigm combined with electrophysiological recordings, using emotional faces as incentive cues (signaling gain, neutral, or loss prospect) to investigate how the alignment between emotional valence and incentive contexts affects the incentive representation and subsequent task motivation. Specifically, in valence-congruent blocks, happy, neutral, and angry faces indicate monetary gain, neutral, and loss conditions, respectively; in valence-incongruent blocks, angry, neutral, and happy faces indicate gain, neutral, and loss conditions, respectively. Participants completed a discrimination task in response to the subsequent target and received performance-contingent feedback. Behaviorally, responses were faster in both gain and loss conditions compared to the neutral condition. Analyses of cue-locked ERP components (fronto-central negativity, parietal positivity, and CNV) revealed no reliable emotion-category differences within the gain context. In contrast, significant processing differences between happy and angry cues emerged in the loss context. These findings demonstrate that the impact of emotional expressions on incentive anticipation varies distinctively across gain and loss prospects, highlighting a nuanced and context-dependent interplay between reward and emotion processing.

Objective: According to dual systems theory, excessive sensitivity to rewards and punishments, along with weakened self-control, contributes to the high prevalence of problematic internet use (PIU) among Chinese children and adolescents. This study investigates how these dual systems affect PIU and whether their relationships differ across age groups. Method: A sample of 4029 Chinese children (9-12 years) and adolescents (13-18 years) completed measures from the Behavioral Activation System/Behavioral Inhibition System Scales (BAS/BIS), the Brief Self-Control Scale (SCS) and the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). We used t-tests and network analysis to examine both the age-related differences and the network structures. Results: Compared with children, adolescents presented increased scores for total BAS, BAS (drive), and IAT but lower scores for SCS total and SCS (impulse control). Network analysis revealed that both the overall network and the separate networks for the two age groups identified SCSi (impulse control) and IAT as central bridge nodes and the negative connection between SCSi (impulse control) and IAT as the strongest edge. Additionally, a comparison of the network structures between the two age groups revealed that the negative correlation between the SCSd (self-discipline) and BASf (fun seeking) scores was stronger in adolescents than in children. Conclusions: This study breaks through the dual-systems theory in a Chinese context by revealing the similarities and differences between the dual systems network and PIU among Chinese children and adolescents. Additionally, it highlights age-specific mechanisms, which can inform targeted interventions for internet dependence.

Previous studies have shown that both reward expectation and conceptual unitization can promote associative memory performance, but little is known about how reward affects two processes of associative memory retrieval (i.e., familiarity and recollection) and whether reward and conceptual unitization have mutual influence on associative recognition. Therefore, this study aims to explore the separate and mutual role of them on associative recognition and their underlying mechanisms through the R/K paradigm (Experiment 1) and event-related potential (ERP) measures (Experiment 2) under consistent unitization-congruence (UC) (Experiment 1) and inconsistent UC (Experiment 2) conditions. Results showed that, under UC-consistent condition, reward promoted associative recognition performance (Prs) through recollection, while conceptual unitization (compounds vs. noncompounds) impaired overall Prs but increased hit rates with reducing recollection but strengthening familiarity. Additionally, for hits, reward weakened the conceptual unitization effect and reward effect only appeared in noncompounds. Under UC-inconsistent condition, results showed the same reward effect and the opposite unitization effect on Prs as Experiment 1. ERP results revealed that in the test phase, reward effects were found in FN400 on frontal location and LPC on frontal and central location with more positive amplitudes for rewarded stimuli, indicating more semantic unitization processing and cognitive efforts putting into them, and conceptual unitization enhanced Prs through familiarity and recollection processes. And ERP reward effects still just existed in noncompounds. The above results indicated that the mechanisms by which reward and conceptual unitization affected associative recognition changed with UC.

With the advancement of Internet technology, problematic Internet use (PIU) has become one of the most common mental health issues among children and adolescents. This study employed network analysis to identify the central symptoms and network connections of PIU, as well as the differences in these complex patterns between children and adolescents. For this purpose, the study included 10,530 participants aged 8–18 years, with participants aged 8–12 classified as the child group and those aged 13–18 classified as the adolescent group. All participants completed the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). The results of the network analysis for the overall sample of children and adolescents indicated that “Anticipate going online again” and “Neglect chores for online time” were the core nodes in the network for both groups. Moreover, the network structure differed between children and adolescents. Compared to children, the adolescent network showed increased relationships between “Prefer internet excitement to close friends” and “Prefer online time over socializing,” “Reluctant to log off (“just a little longer”),” and “Fail to cut down online time.” This study provided empirical support for more effective and timely interventions and treatments tailored to different age groups by identifying the core symptoms and complex relationships of PIU in the symptom networks of children and adolescents.

Research examining the effects of reward anticipation on episodic memory has primarily focused on adults. It is unclear how reward affects episodic memory among early school-aged children. Therefore, this study employed a study-recognition paradigm with reward and no-reward cues to investigate the influence of reward anticipation on episodic memory in children aged 6-9 years (n = 31), and recorded EEG to reveal the underlying neural mechanisms. Behaviorally, reward anticipation significantly improved the recognition memory accuracy of the child participants. Analyses of the encoding phase revealed that the amplitudes of the P1 and P3 components were significantly larger for rewarded items than for non-rewarded items, indicating stronger selective attention to rewarded items as well as children allocating more cognitive resources to learning rewarded items. Furthermore, we observed significant differences in the amplitudes of the N400 and SW components between rewarded and non-rewarded items, suggesting that children engaged in more detailed encoding processes for rewarded items. In the retrieval phase, we observed a significant reward effect in the 600-800 ms time window at the left centro-posterior electrodes, while in the 300-500 ms and 500-1000 ms time windows, parietal old/new effects were observed. This indicates that children's information retrieval may have primarily relied on recollection, with reward anticipation enhancing recollection. Overall, our study provides new evidence for the neural mechanisms underlying the enhancement of children's episodic memory through reward anticipation.

Charitable giving is a costly prosocial act in which individuals donate money or other resources to benefit others. Although the relationship between effort and prosocial behavior has been explored, how effort expenditure affects subsequent prosocial decisions and the underlying neurocognitive processes remains poorly understood. We conducted two experiments to address this, using cognitive modeling of behavioral responses in Experiment 1 and electrophysiological recordings in Experiment 2. In both experiments, participants received cues indicating the effort type required (effort vs. no-effort) before completing a task involving either physical effort or rest. They earned monetary rewards based on performance or unconditionally and then decided whether to accept donation offers at low, medium, or high costs. Behavioral results in both experiments revealed that participants were more likely to reject donation offers after exerting effort, particularly for medium- and high-cost offers. Analysis using a hierarchical drift diffusion model revealed that participants accumulated information more rapidly and required less evidence for decision-making in the effort condition compared to the no-effort condition. Electrophysiological results revealed that effort expenditure heightened reward-sensitive neural responses upon receiving monetary feedback, as reflected by increased reward positivity, fb-P3, and fb-delta power. Moreover, higher amplitudes of reward positivity and fb-P3 in response to effort-earned feedback were associated with less generous prosocial donations. These findings demonstrate that effort expenditure amplifies reward sensitivity, expedites the accumulation of self-interest, simplifies the decision-making process, and ultimately strengthens proself choices during decision-making.

Objective: This study focused on the influences of individual beliefs about emotion controllability (ECB) and goodness (EGB) on the process of reappraisal and suppression using event­related potential (ERP) approach. Method: Ninety­two participants were divided into four groups (n = 23 for each group) according to their scores of ECB and EGB, and then were asked to engage in a picture­based emotion regulation task while EEG signals were recorded. Results: The results showed an interaction among EGB, ECB and emotion regulation strategy in early posterior negativity (EPN): Participants believing that emotions were good and controllable displayed enhanced EPN under reappraisal compared to suppression, implying that reappraisal instruction can potentiate early processing of negative stimuli in these people. Furthermore, an interaction between ECB (but not EGB) and emotion regulation was observed in the late positive potential (LPP). The parietal LPP (400­1000 ms) was significantly higher in negative­viewing vs. reappraisal and suppression conditions among participants believing that emotions were controllable, suggesting that the belief that emotions were controllable can help individuals effectively use reappraisal and suppression to reduce the level of unpleasant feelings. Differently, among participants holding that emotions were uncontrollable, the frontal (650­1700 ms) and parietal (400­1000 ms) LPPs were lower under reappraisal vs. suppression condition, indicating that they could benefit from the instruction of reappraisal, although they put in more effort for suppressing facial expression. Conclusion: These results highlight the role of emotion beliefs in emotion regulation.

The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the ability of task demand in modulating the effect of reward association on the processing of emotional faces. In the learning phase, a high or low reward probability was paired with male or female facial photos of angry, happy, or neutral expressions. Then, in the test phase, task demand was manipulated by asking participants to discriminate the emotionality or the gender of the pre-learned face with no reward at stake. The ERP results in the test phase revealed that the fronto-central N1 (60–100 ms) and the VPP (160–210 ms) components were sensitive to the interaction between reward and emotion, in that the differences between the mean amplitudes for high- and low-reward conditions were significantly larger in the neutral face and angry face conditions than in the happy face condition. Moreover, reward association and task demand showed a significant interaction over the right hemisphere for the N170 component (140–180 ms), with amplitude difference between high- and low-reward conditions being larger in the emotion task than that in the gender task. The later N2pc component exhibited an interaction between task demand and emotionality, in that happy faces elicited larger N2pc difference waves than angry and neutral faces did in the emotion task, but neutral faces elicited larger N2pc difference waves than angry faces did in the gender task. The N2pc effect aligned with behavioral performance. These results suggest that reward association acts as an ‘emotional tagging’ to imbue neutral or angry faces with motivational significance at early time windows. Task demand functions in a top-down way to modulate the deployment of attentional resources at the later attentional selection stage, but does not affect the early automatic processing of either emotion or reward association.

What is more effective to guide behavior: The desire to gain or the fear to lose? Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have yielded inconsistent answers. In a systematic exploration of the valence and magnitude parameters in monetary gain and loss processing, we used time-domain and time-frequency-domain analyses to uncover the underlying neural processes. A group of 24 participants performed a monetary incentive delay (MID) task in which cue-induced anticipation of a high or low magnitude of gain or loss was manipulated trial-wise. Behaviorally, the anticipation of both gain and loss expedited responses, with gain anticipation producing greater facilitation than loss anticipation. Analyses of cue-locked P2 and P3 components revealed the significant valence main effect and valence × magnitude interaction: amplitude differences between high and low incentive magnitudes were larger with gain vs. loss cues. However, the contingent negative variation component was sensitive to incentive magnitude but did not vary with incentive valence. In the feedback phase, the RewP component exhibited reversed patterns for gain and loss trials. Time-frequency analyses revealed a large increase in delta/theta-ERS oscillatory activity in high- vs. low-magnitude conditions and a large decrease of alpha-ERD oscillatory activity in gain vs. loss conditions in the anticipation stage. In the consumption stage, delta/theta-ERS turned out stronger for negative than positive feedback, especially in the gain condition. Overall, our study provides new evidence for the neural oscillatory features of monetary gain and loss processing in the MID task, suggesting that participants invested more attention under gain and high-magnitude conditions vs. loss and low-magnitude conditions.

Previous studies investigating the effect of reward on emotional episodic memory have produced inconsistent results. In this study, through two experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the effect of reward association on the encoding and retrieval of incidentally encoded emotional information, and examined whether this effect changes over time. Participants in the two experiments were asked to discriminate the emotional valence of color images under reward or no-reward condition and incidentally encode them. Immediate (in Experiment 1) or 24-hour delayed (in Experiment 2) recognition after encoding was tested. In Experiments 1 and 2, reward (relative to no-reward) significantly improved the recognition of positive and neutral items, but significantly reduced the recognition of negative items. During encoding, the significant ERP reward effects (significantly more positive ERP amplitude for rewarded items than for non-rewarded ones) for positive and neutral images were widely distributed from 200 to 1500 ms after image onset, while those for negative stimuli occurred mainly from 200 to 500 ms. During retrieval, the significant ERP reward effects for positive and neutral items occurred in the two experiments, but the reversed ERP reward effects for negative items were found only in Experiment 1. The results of the present study suggest that reward association affects the encoding and retrieval of emotional images by enhancing memory processing efficiency of positive and neutral items, while impairing recognition of negative items, thus yielding a robust and sustained modulation over frontal/frontocentral or centroparietal/parietal areas where mechanisms of reward and emotion processing operate in conjunction.

Previous studies show that neuroticism has a significant impact on depression in college students. However, the mechanisms linking neuroticism and depression remain unclear. This study investigates whether neuroticism influences depression through the mediation of negative cognitive bias and anhedonia and whether there are gender differences in this mechanism. A total of 1085 Chinese college students were surveyed using the Self-rating Depression Scale, the neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire the Negative Cognitive Bias Questionnaire, and the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and a multigroup comparison by gender. The results showed that neuroticism positively predicted the level of depression in college students. Negative cognitive bias and anhedonia played a chain-mediating role in the relationship between neuroticism and depression. Furthermore, there were gender differences in the mechanisms of neuroticism influenced depression. The direct effect of neuroticism on the level of depression was stronger in males, whereas negative cognitive bias mediated the relationship between neuroticism and depression only in females. These findings extend our insight into the mechanisms underlying the association between neuroticism and depression in college students and suggest focusing on gender-specific predictors of depression in college students to develop gender-specific interventions to reduce depression.

Are people willing to exert greater effort to obtain rewards for their children than they are for themselves? Although previous studies have demonstrated that social distance influences neural responses to altruistic reward processing, the distinction between winning rewards for oneself and winning them for one's child is unclear. In the present study, a group of 31 mothers performed a monetary incentive delay task in which cue-induced reward anticipations of winning a reward for themselves, their children and donation to a charity program were manipulated trial-wise, followed by performance-contingent feedback. Behaviorally, the anticipation of winning a reward for their children accelerated participants' responses. Importantly, the electroencephalogram results revealed that across the reward anticipation and consumption phases, the child condition elicited comparable or higher brain responses of participants than the self condition did. The source localization results showed that participants' reward anticipations for their children were associated with more activation in the social brain regions, compared to winning a reward for themselves or a charity donation. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms of altruistic reward processing and suggest that the priority of winning a reward for one's child may transcend the limits of the self-advantage effect in reward processing.

The aim of the current study was to examine how reward-associated emotional facial distractors could capture attentional resources in a demanding visual task using event-related potentials (ERPs). In the learning phase, a high- or low-reward probability was paired with angry, happy, or neutral faces. Then, in the test phase, participants performed a face-irrelevant task with no reward at stake, in which they needed to discriminate the length of two lines presented in the center of the screen while faces that were taken from the learning phase were used as distractors presented in the periphery. The behavioral results revealed no effect of distractor emotional valence since the emotional information was task-irrelevant. The ERP results in the test phase revealed a significant main effect of distractor emotional valence for the parieto-occipital P200 (170-230 ms); the mean amplitudes in both the angry- and happy-face conditions were more positive than the neutral-face condition. Moreover, we found that the high-reward association enhanced both the N170 (140-180 ms) and EPN (260-330 ms) relative to the low-reward association condition. Finally, the N2pc (270-320 ms) also exhibited enhanced neural activity in the high-reward condition compared to the low-reward condition. The absence of emotional effects indicated that task-irrelevant emotional facial stimuli did not impact behavioral or neural responses in this highly demanding task. However, reward-associated information was processed when attention was directed elsewhere, suggesting that the processing of reward-associated information worked more in an automatic way, irrespective of the top-down task demand.

Previous research has suggested that familiarity can enhance associative memory after unitization, but the cognitive mechanisms underlying unitization remain debated. To explore the neural mechanisms of associative memory after unitization in the absence of semantic relations, we used Chinese characters as stimuli and recorded participants' blood oxygen level-dependent signals during recognition. Behavioral results showed that after Chinese character unitization, not only the associative performance of recognition (Pr, hit rate minus false alarm rate) and general Pr but also the hit rate and correct rejection rate increased. Neuroimaging results revealed activation of the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus during associative recognition in both the unitized and the non-unitized condition, and hippocampal activation increased after unitization. However, activation of the perirhinal cortex was not observed in either condition. These findings, in contrast to those from previous studies on unitization, suggest that Chinese character unitization enhances recollection-based, rather than familiarity-based, associative recognition. This suggests that the encoding of semantic relations during unitization is critical for subsequent familiarity-based associative recognition.

Methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) is a chronic brain disorder that involves frequent failures of inhibitory control and relapses into methamphetamine intake. However, it remains unclear whether the impairment of inhibitory control in MUD is proactive, reactive or both. To address this issue, the current study used the conditional stop-signal task to assess proactive and reactive inhibitory control in 35 MUD patients with long-term abstinence and 35 matched healthy controls. The results showed that MUD patients with long-term abstinence had greater preparation costs than healthy controls, but did not differ in performance, implying a less efficient utilization of proactive inhibitory control. In contrast, MUD patients exhibited intact reactive inhibitory control; reactive but not proactive inhibitory control was associated with high sensation seeking in MUD patients with long-term abstinence. These findings suggest that proactive and reactive inhibitory control may be two different important endophenotypes of addiction in MUD patients with long-term abstinence. The current study provides new insight into the uses of proactive and reactive inhibitory control to effectively evaluate and precisely treat MUD patients with long-term abstinence.

Motivational dysfunction constitutes one of the fundamental dimensions of psychopathology cutting across traditional diagnostic boundaries. However, it is unclear whether there is a common neural circuit responsible for motivational dysfunction across neuropsychiatric conditions. To address this issue, the current study combined a meta-analysis on psychiatric neuroimaging studies of reward/loss anticipation and consumption (4308 foci, 438 contrasts, 129 publications) with a lesion network mapping approach (105 lesion cases). Our metaanalysis identified transdiagnostic hypoactivation in the ventral striatum (VS) for clinical/at-risk conditions compared to controls during the anticipation of both reward and loss. Moreover, the VS subserves a key node in a distributed brain network which encompasses heterogeneous lesion locations causing motivation-related symptoms. These findings do not only provide the first meta-analytic evidence of shared neural alternations linked to anticipatory motivation-related deficits, but also shed novel light on the role of VS dysfunction in motivational impairments in terms of both network integration and psychological functions. Particularly, the current findings suggest that motivational dysfunction across neuropsychiatric conditions is rooted in disruptions of a common brain network anchored in the VS, which contributes to motivational salience processing rather than encoding positive incentive values.