Fig. 2.

Functional MRI whole-brain contrasts and NAcc raw activity timecourses.

(A) Whole-brain FMRI analyses revealed increased mesolimbic activity during anticipation of potential gains versus non-gains (voxelwise p < 0.001, cluster-corrected p < 0.05). There was increased medial PFC activity during receipt of gains, and increased left anterior insula and right ventrolateral PFC activity during receipt of non-gains. The spherical NAcc VOI indicates where raw activity was extracted for time course and individual difference analyses. See Supplementary Fig. 2 for equivalent whole-brain maps of the loss and non-loss conditions.

(B) Raw percent signal change in NAcc activity was plotted to illustrate critical predictions. In both hemispheres, NAcc activity was greater when anticipating potential gains than non-gains (gain versus non-gain: paired t(90) = 4.46, p < 0.001), and when anticipating potential losses than non-losses (paired t(90) = 3.24, p < 0.01). NAcc activity was additionally greater during the anticipation of gains than the anticipation of losses (paired t(90)=-2.76, p < 0.01).