Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AE, UK.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AE, UK.
Neuron. 2019 Mar 6;101(5):977-987.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.12.029. Epub 2019 Jan 22.
Humans and other animals make decisions in order to satisfy their goals. However, it remains unknown how neural circuits compute which of multiple possible goals should be pursued (e.g., when balancing hunger and thirst) and how to combine these signals with estimates of available reward alternatives. Here, humans undergoing fMRI accumulated two distinct assets over a sequence of trials. Financial outcomes depended on the minimum cumulate of either asset, creating a need to maintain "value equilibrium" by redressing any imbalance among the assets. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) tracked the level of imbalance among goals, whereas the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) signaled the level of redress incurred by a choice rather than the overall amount received. These results suggest that a network of medial frontal brain regions compute a value signal that maintains value equilibrium among internal goals.
人类和其他动物为了满足目标而做出决策。然而，目前尚不清楚多个可能的目标中，神经回路如何计算应该追求哪个目标（例如，在平衡饥饿和口渴时），以及如何将这些信号与可用奖励替代方案的估计相结合。在这里，接受 fMRI 的人类在一系列试验中积累了两种不同的资产。金融结果取决于这两种资产中的任何一种的最小累积，通过纠正资产之间的任何不平衡来维持“价值平衡”。前扣带皮层（rACC）中的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）信号跟踪目标之间的不平衡程度，而腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）则反映了选择所产生的调整程度，而不是所收到的总体金额。这些结果表明，内侧额前脑区域的网络计算出一个价值信号，在内部目标之间保持价值平衡。
