Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 20 Penn Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
Science. 2012 Nov 16;338(6109):953-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1227489.
Computational and learning theory models propose that behavioral control reflects value that is both cached (computed and stored during previous experience) and inferred (estimated on the fly on the basis of knowledge of the causal structure of the environment). The latter is thought to depend on the orbitofrontal cortex. Yet some accounts propose that the orbitofrontal cortex contributes to behavior by signaling "economic" value, regardless of the associative basis of the information. We found that the orbitofrontal cortex is critical for both value-based behavior and learning when value must be inferred but not when a cached value is sufficient. The orbitofrontal cortex is thus fundamental for accessing model-based representations of the environment to compute value rather than for signaling value per se.
计算和学习理论模型表明，行为控制反映了既被缓存（在先前的经验中计算和存储）又被推断（根据对环境因果结构的了解实时估计）的价值。后者被认为依赖于眶额皮层。然而，一些观点认为，眶额皮层通过信号“经济”价值来促进行为，而不考虑信息的联想基础。我们发现，眶额皮层对于基于价值的行为和学习都是至关重要的，当必须推断价值时，而不是当缓存的值足够时。因此，眶额皮层对于访问基于模型的环境表示以计算价值而不是本身信号价值是至关重要的。
