Center for Decision Science, Columbia University, Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027-6902, USA.
Department of Epileptology, Sigmund-Freud-Str.25, University Hospital Bonn, 53127, Bonn, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2017 Dec 18;7(1):17738. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-18015-4.
Consistent decisions are intuitively desirable and theoretically important for utility maximization. Neuroeconomics has established the neurobiological substrate of value representation, but brain regions that provide input to this network is less explored. The constructed-preference tradition within behavioral decision research gives a critical role to associative cognitive processes, suggesting a hippocampal role in making consistent decisions. We compared the performance of 31 patients with mediotemporal lobe (MTL) epilepsy and hippocampal lesions, 30 patients with extratemporal lobe epilepsy, and 30 healthy controls on two tasks: binary choices between candy bars based on their preferences and a number-comparison control task where the larger number is chosen. MTL patients made more inconsistent choices than the other two groups for the value-based choice but not the number-comparison task. These inconsistencies correlated with the volume of compromised hippocampal tissue. These results add to increasing evidence on a critical involvement of the MTL in preference construction and value-based choices.
一致决策在效用最大化方面具有直观的吸引力和理论重要性。神经经济学已经确定了价值表示的神经生物学基础，但为该网络提供输入的大脑区域尚未得到充分探索。行为决策研究中的构建偏好传统赋予了联想认知过程关键作用，这表明海马体在做出一致决策中发挥作用。我们比较了 31 名内侧颞叶（MTL）癫痫伴海马损伤患者、30 名颞叶外癫痫患者和 30 名健康对照者在两项任务中的表现：基于喜好的糖果棒之间的二项选择，以及选择较大数字的数字比较控制任务。基于价值的选择中，MTL 患者的不一致选择比其他两组多，但在数字比较任务中则不然。这些不一致与受损海马组织的体积相关。这些结果增加了越来越多的证据，证明 MTL 在偏好构建和基于价值的选择中具有关键作用。
