Achieving reward and avoiding punishment are in essence two types of motivation and learning

1. Interrogative goals- involve the exploration of our environment in search of a novel reward

• A positive outcome of interaction in the environment stimulate VTA-hippocampal synergy and will be processed in the brain as a reward due to the reduction of error-prediction signals, resulting from differences in one's neural perception signals and one's reference signals

2. Imperative goals - involve the avoidance of punishment

• The process of learning to avoid such threats is based on connectivity between the amygdala and the cortical aspects of the medial temporal lobes (crucial for episodic and spatial memory)
• The absence of expected reward is also experienced as punishment, and results in an increase in prediction error signals