Differential effects of intra-modal and cross-modal reward value on perception: ERP evidence

In natural environments objects comprise multiple features from the same or different sensory modalities but it is not known how perception of an object is affected by the value associations of its constituent parts. The present study compares intra- and cross-modal value-driven effects on behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of perception. Human participants first learned the reward associations of visual and auditory cues. Subsequently, they performed a visual discrimination task in the presence of previously rewarded, task-irrelevant visual or auditory cues (intra- and cross-modal cues, respectively). During the conditioning phase, when reward associations were learned and reward cues were the target of the task, high value stimuli of both modalities enhanced the electrophysiological correlates of sensory processing in posterior electrodes. During the post-conditioning phase, when reward delivery was halted and previously rewarded stimuli were task-irrelevant, cross-modal value significantly enhanced the behavioral measures of visual sensitivity, whereas intra-modal value produced only an insignificant decrement. Analysis of the simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) of posterior electrodes revealed similar findings. We found an early (90–120 ms) suppression of ERPs evoked by high-value, intra-modal stimuli. Cross-modal stimuli led to a later value-driven modulation, with an enhancement of response positivity for high- compared to low-value stimuli starting at the N1 window (180–250 ms) and extending to the P3 (300–600 ms) responses. These results indicate that sensory processing of a compound stimulus comprising a visual target and task-irrelevant visual or auditory cues is modulated by the reward value of both sensory modalities, but such modulations rely on distinct underlying mechanisms.