Dissociation of reward anticipation and outcome with event-related fMRI

Reward processing involves both appetitive and consummatory phases. We soug ht to examine whether reward anticipation vs outcomes would recruit differe nt regions of ventral forebrain circuitry using event-related fMRI. Nine he althy volunteers participated in a monetary incentive delays task in which they either responded to a cued target for monetary reward, responded to a cued target for no reward, or did not respond to a cued target during scann ing. Multiple regression analyses indicated that while anticipation of rewa rd Ys non-reward activated foci in the ventral striatum, reward vs non-rewa rd outcomes activated foci in the ventromedial frontal cortex. These findin gs suggest that reward anticipation band outcomes may differentially recrui t distinct regions that lie along the trajectory of ascending dopamine proj ections. NeuroReport 12:3683-3687 (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.