Attention gates reward modulation of short-term ocular dominance plasticity

Here, combining behavioral experiments, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial magnetic stimulation, we investigated whether reward enhances the short-term monocular deprivation effect and whether this enhancement reflects direct modulation of visual plasticity or operates through attentional control.

We found that reward enhanced ocular dominance plasticity only when it remained task-relevant, whereas dissociating reward from the ongoing task abolished this effect. fMRI revealed reward-related activation in both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and frontal eye field, and disrupting either region using continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) eliminated the reward-induced enhancement of ocular dominance plasticity.