TY - JOUR T1 - Overt attention towards appetitive cues enhances their subjective value, independent of orbitofrontal cortex activity JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0230-19.2019 SP - ENEURO.0230-19.2019 AU - Vincent B. McGinty Y1 - 2019/09/25 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2019/09/25/ENEURO.0230-19.2019.abstract N2 - Neural representations of value underlie many behaviors that are crucial for survival. Previously, we found that value representations in primate orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are modulated by attention, specifically, by overt shifts of gaze towards or away from reward-associated visual cues (McGinty et al., 2016). Here, we investigate the influence of overt attention on behavior, by asking how gaze shifts correlate with reward anticipatory responses, and whether activity in OFC mediates this correlation. Macaque monkeys viewed Pavlovian-conditioned appetitive cues on a visual display, while the fraction of time they spent looking towards or away from the cues was measured using an eye tracker. Also measured during cue presentation were the monkeys’ reward anticipation, indicated by conditioned licking responses (CRs), and single neuron activity in OFC. In general, gaze allocation predicted subsequent licking responses: the longer the monkeys spent looking at a cue at a given time point in a trial, the more likely they were to produce an anticipatory CR later in that trial, as if the subjective value of the cue were increased. To address neural mechanisms, mediation analysis measured the extent to which the gaze-CR correlation could be statistically explained by the concurrently recorded firing of OFC neurons. The resulting mediation effects were indistinguishable from chance. Therefore, while overt attention may increase the subjective value of reward-associated cues (as revealed by anticipatory behaviors), the underlying mechanism remains unknown, as does the functional significance of gaze-driven modulation of OFC value signals.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Recent studies of human decision-making suggest a link between gaze and value: longer fixation of gaze upon a given item appears to accentuate its subjective value (its likelihood of being chosen), relative to items that are fixated less. The chief contribution of this study is novel evidence suggesting that gaze also modulates subjective value in simple appetitive conditioning, in an animal model whose gaze behavior closely resembles our own. It is therefore possible that the effects of gaze on value may apply to many forms of motivated behavior. With respect to the neural mechanisms by which gaze influences conditioned responses, our data appear to rule out a role for the OFC, though additional studies are necessary to confirm this finding. ER -