Steiner Adam P, Redish A David
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Front Neurosci. 2012 Sep 11;6:131. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00131. eCollection 2012.
Empirical research links human orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to the evaluation of outcomes during decision making and the representation of alternative (better) outcomes after failures. When faced with a difficult decision, rats sometimes pause and turn back-and-forth toward goals, until finally orienting toward the chosen direction. Neural representations of reward in rodent OFC increased immediately following each reorientation, implying a transient representation of the expected outcome following self-initiated decisions. Upon reaching reward locations and finding no reward (having made an error), OFC representations of reward decreased locally indicating a disappointment signal that then switched to represent the unrewarded, non-local, would-have-been rewarded site. These results illustrate that following a decision to act, neural ensembles in OFC represent reward, and upon the realization of an error, represent the reward that could have been.
实证研究将人类眶额皮质（OFC）与决策过程中的结果评估以及失败后替代（更好）结果的表征联系起来。当面临艰难决策时，大鼠有时会停顿并朝着目标来回转动，直到最终朝着选定的方向定向。啮齿动物眶额皮质中奖励的神经表征在每次重新定向后立即增加，这意味着自我发起决策后预期结果的短暂表征。到达奖励位置却未找到奖励（即犯了错误）时，眶额皮质中奖励的表征在局部区域减少，表明出现了失望信号，然后该信号转而表征未获得奖励的、非局部的、本应获得奖励的位置。这些结果表明，在做出行动决策后，眶额皮质中的神经集合体表征奖励，而在意识到错误时，则表征本可获得的奖励。
