Plassmann Hilke, O'Doherty John, Rangel Antonio
California Institute of Technology, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, MC 228-77, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
J Neurosci. 2007 Sep 12;27(37):9984-8. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2131-07.2007.
An essential component of every economic transaction is a willingness-to-pay (WTP) computation in which buyers calculate the maximum amount of financial resources that they are willing to give up in exchange for the object being sold. Despite its pervasiveness, little is known about how the brain makes this computation. We investigated the neural basis of the WTP computation by scanning hungry subjects' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they placed real bids for the right to eat different foods. We found that activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex encodes subjects' WTP for the items. Our results support the hypothesis that the medial orbitofrontal cortex encodes the value of goals in decision making.
每一项经济交易的一个重要组成部分是支付意愿（WTP）计算，即买家计算他们愿意放弃的最大财务资源量，以换取所售物品。尽管其普遍存在，但对于大脑如何进行这种计算却知之甚少。我们通过功能磁共振成像扫描饥饿受试者的大脑，同时他们对食用不同食物的权利进行实际出价，以此来研究支付意愿计算的神经基础。我们发现，内侧眶额皮质和背外侧前额叶皮质的活动编码了受试者对这些物品的支付意愿。我们的结果支持了内侧眶额皮质在决策中编码目标价值这一假设。
