Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, WC1H 0AP London, United Kingdom;
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jul 31;115(31):E7255-E7264. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1800547115. Epub 2018 Jun 28.
The pursuit of knowledge is a basic feature of human nature. However, in domains ranging from health to finance people sometimes choose to remain ignorant. Here, we show that valence is central to the process by which the human brain evaluates the opportunity to gain information, explaining why knowledge may not always be preferred. We reveal that the mesolimbic reward circuitry selectively treats the opportunity to gain knowledge about future favorable outcomes, but not unfavorable outcomes, as if it has positive utility. This neural coding predicts participants' tendency to choose knowledge about future desirable outcomes more often than undesirable ones, and to choose ignorance about future undesirable outcomes more often than desirable ones. Strikingly, participants are willing to pay both for knowledge and ignorance as a function of the expected valence of knowledge. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), however, responds to the opportunity to receive knowledge over ignorance regardless of the valence of the information. Connectivity between the OFC and mesolimbic circuitry could contribute to a general preference for knowledge that is also modulated by valence. Our findings characterize the importance of valence in information seeking and its underlying neural computation. This mechanism could lead to suboptimal behavior, such as when people reject medical screenings or monitor investments more during bull than bear markets.
对知识的追求是人类本性的基本特征。然而，在从健康到金融等领域，人们有时会选择保持无知。在这里，我们表明，价值是人类大脑评估获取信息机会的过程的核心，解释了为什么知识并不总是被优先考虑。我们揭示了中脑边缘奖励回路选择性地将获得关于未来有利结果的知识的机会视为具有正效用，但不是不利结果的机会。这种神经编码预测了参与者更倾向于选择关于未来理想结果的知识，而不是关于不理想结果的知识，而不是相反。引人注目的是，参与者愿意根据知识的预期价值来支付知识和无知的费用。然而，眶额皮层（OFC）对获得知识而不是无知的机会的反应与信息的价值无关。OFC 和中脑边缘电路之间的连通性可能有助于对知识的普遍偏好，这种偏好也受到价值的调节。我们的发现描述了价值在信息寻求及其潜在神经计算中的重要性。这种机制可能导致次优行为，例如当人们拒绝医疗筛查或在牛市期间比熊市期间更频繁地监控投资时。
