Selection and integration of information based on current goals is fundamental for goal-directed behavior. Reward motivation has been shown to improve behavioral performance, yet the neural mechanisms that link motivation and control processes, and in particular its effect on context-dependent information processing, remain unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 24 human volunteers (13 females) to test whether reward motivation enhances the coding of task-relevant information across the frontoparietal cortex, as would be predicted based on previous experimental evidence and theoretical accounts. In a cued target detection task, participants detected whether an object from a cued visual category was present in a subsequent display. The combination of the cue and the object visual category determined the behavioral status of the objects. To manipulate reward motivation, half of all trials offered the possibility of a monetary reward. We observed an increase with reward in overall univariate activity across the frontoparietal control network when the cue and subsequent object were presented. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) showed that behavioral status information for the objects was conveyed across the network. However, in contrast to our prediction, reward did not increase the discrimination between behavioral status conditions in the stimulus epoch of a trial when object information was processed depending on a current context. In the high-level general-object visual region, the lateral occipital complex, the representation of behavioral status was driven by visual differences and was not modulated by reward. Our study provides useful evidence for the limited effects of reward motivation on task-related neural representations and highlights the necessity to unravel the diverse forms and extent of these effects.

根据当前目标选择和整合信息是目标导向行为的基础。奖励动机已被证明可以改善行为表现，但将动机和控制过程联系起来的神经机制，特别是其对上下文相关信息处理的影响，仍不清楚。我们在 24 名人类志愿者（13 名女性）中使用功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 来测试奖励动机是否增强了整个额顶叶皮层的任务相关信息的编码，正如根据先前的实验证据和理论解释所预测的那样。在提示目标检测任务中，参与者检测来自提示视觉类别的对象是否存在于后续显示中。线索和对象视觉类别的组合决定了对象的行为状态。为了操纵奖励动机，所有试验中有一半提供了金钱奖励的可能性。当提示和随后的物体出现时，我们观察到整个额顶控制网络的整体单变量活动的奖励增加。多变量模式分析 (MVPA) 表明对象的行为状态信息通过网络传输。然而，与我们的预测相反，当根据当前上下文处理对象信息时，奖励并没有增加在试验的刺激时期中行为状态条件之间的区别。在高级一般对象视觉区域，外侧枕骨复合体，行为状态的表现是由视觉差异驱动的，不受奖励的调节。我们的研究为奖励动机对任务相关神经表征的有限影响提供了有用的证据，并强调了阐明这些影响的不同形式和程度的必要性。