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Motor activation in cue-guided behavior: Neural evidence from human Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT)

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: • Pavlovian cues dynamically modulate motor activation during passive cue exposure. • Action-associated cues (Specific PIT) recruit striatal–sensorimotor circuits after action-outcome learning. • Non-action cues (General PIT) preferentially engage visual–associative regions early in learning. • Instrumental learning enables cue-driven retrieval of motor–sensorimotor circuits even without overt movement. • Our findings reveal how reward-predictive cues transform motivational value into action-oriented neural representations. In everyday life, our behavior is often guided by environmental cues that predict rewarding or aversive outcomes. The Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm provides a framework for examining how conditioned stimuli (CS) influence instrumental actions (R) associated with specific outcomes (O). Two distinct mechanisms have been identified: specific PIT, where a cue selectively invigorates the action linked to the same outcome, and general PIT, where reward-predictive cues non-selectively enhance response vigor. Theoretical accounts propose that specific PIT depends on the reactivation of learned action representations by sensory-specific cues, yet it remains unclear whether such reactivation occurs during passive cue exposure (Pavlovian phase) and how it evolves across learning. Using fMRI (N = 31), we investigated cue-evoked neural activity during two Pavlovian learning phases, before and after instrumental learning, in a four-phase PIT paradigm. Behaviorally, participants showed robust specific and general PIT effects in the transfer phase. At the neural level, general PIT-related cues engaged occipito-temporal visual and associative regions early in learning, whereas specific PIT-related cues recruited fronto-parietal, premotor, sensorimotor and striatal regions (MFG, IPS, PMC/M1/S1, caudate, putamen) after instrumental learning. These findings indicate that Pavlovian cues dynamically engage motor and sensorimotor systems following action–outcome learning, consistent with outcome-mediated retrieval of learned action representations even in the absence of overt movement. Together, the results refine theoretical models of PIT by demonstrating learning-dependent modulation of corticostriatal circuits during passive cue processing.

Source: NeuroImage

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121874