RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A quantitative interaction between signal detection in attention and reward/aversion behavior JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 032912 DO 10.1101/032912 A1 V Viswanathan A1 BW Kim A1 JP Sheppard A1 H Ying A1 K Raman A1 MJ Lee A1 S Lee A1 F Mulhern A1 M Block A1 B Calder A1 D Mortensen A1 AJ Blood A1 HC Breiter A1 Phenotype Genotype Project in Addiction and Mood Disorders YR 2015 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/11/26/032912.abstract AB This study examines how processes such as reward/aversion and attention, which are often studied as independent processes, in fact interact at a systems level. We operationalize attention with a continuous performance task and variables from signal detection theory, and reward/aversion with a keypress task using variables from relative preference theory. We find that while the relationship between reward/aversion and attention is functionally invariant, a power law formulation akin to the Cobb-Douglas production function in economics provides the best model fit and theoretical explanation for the interaction. These results indicate that a decreasing signal-to-noise with signal detection results in higher loss aversion. Furthermore, the estimated exponents for the multiplicative power law suggest capacity constraints to processing for attention and reward/aversion. These results demonstrate a systemic interaction of attention and reward/aversion across subjects, with a quantitative schema raising the hypothesis that mechanistic inference may be possible at the level of behavior alone.