A comparison of brain responses to cue pictures signaling a reward or avoidable loss [positive effect of gain anticipation; (anticipate gain > anticipate neutral)HC AND (anticipate gain > anticipate neutral)BPD] elicited widespread activations within the mesolimbic reward system, including the ventral and dorsal striatum, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, extending into the supplementary motor area (dACC/SMA) and the thalamus (p < 0.05, whole-brain FWE-corrected; see Supplementary Table S1), replicating previous results . Similarly, anticipation of avoidable losses [positive effect of loss anticipation; (anticipate loss > anticipate neutral)HC AND (anticipate loss > anticipate neutral)BPD] also engaged the striatum and prefrontal neocortical structures in both groups, including the dACC/SMA (p < 0.05, whole-brain FWE-corrected; Supplementary Table S2).
Reward feedback (gain - neutral) was associated with an increased activation of the VS/NAcc whereas loss feedback (loss - neutral) elicited a deactivation of the VS/NAcc (F-contrast testing reward feedback against loss feedback across groups; Supplementary Fig. S2). An exploratory ANCOVA model testing for potential effects of the high gains or losses revealed no reliable activation differences between high gains or losses and standard gain or loss feedback, respectively.