人类腹内侧前额叶皮层中不同商品决策价值存在共同表征的证据。
Evidence for a common representation of decision values for dissimilar goods in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
作者信息
Chib Vikram S, Rangel Antonio, Shimojo Shinsuke, O'Doherty John P
机构信息
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
出版信息
J Neurosci. 2009 Sep 30;29(39):12315-20. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2575-09.2009.
To make economic choices between goods, the brain needs to compute representations of their values. A great deal of research has been performed to determine the neural correlates of value representations in the human brain. However, it is still unknown whether there exists a region of the brain that commonly encodes decision values for different types of goods, or if, in contrast, the values of different types of goods are represented in distinct brain regions. We addressed this question by scanning subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they made real purchasing decisions among different categories of goods (food, nonfood consumables, and monetary gambles). We found activity in a key brain region previously implicated in encoding goal-values: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was correlated with the subjects' value for each category of good. Moreover, we found a single area in vmPFC to be correlated with the subjects' valuations for all categories of goods. Our results provide evidence that the brain encodes a "common currency" that allows for a shared valuation for different categories of goods.
为了在商品之间做出经济选择,大脑需要计算它们价值的表征。已经进行了大量研究来确定人类大脑中价值表征的神经关联。然而,大脑中是否存在一个区域通常对不同类型商品的决策价值进行编码,或者相反,不同类型商品的价值是否在不同的脑区中得到表征,目前仍不清楚。我们通过功能磁共振成像扫描受试者来解决这个问题,当时他们在不同类别的商品(食品、非食品消费品和货币赌博)之间做出实际购买决策。我们发现一个先前与编码目标价值有关的关键脑区有活动:腹内侧前额叶皮层(vmPFC)与受试者对每类商品的价值相关。此外,我们发现vmPFC中的一个单一区域与受试者对所有类别的商品估值相关。我们的结果提供了证据,表明大脑编码了一种“通用货币”,使得对不同类别的商品能够进行共享估值。