School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2024 Jan 29;193:108758. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108758. Epub 2023 Dec 14.
In daily life, we often make decisions based on relative value of the options, and we often derive these values from segmenting or integrating the outcomes of past episodes in memory. The neural correlates involved in value-based decision-making have been extensively studied in the literature, but few studies have investigated this topic in decisions that require segmenting or integrating episodic memory from related sources, and even fewer studies examine it in the context of spatial navigation. Building on the computational models from our previous studies, the current study investigates the neural substrates involved in decisions that require people either segment or integrate wayfinding outcomes involving different goals, across virtual spatial navigation tasks with differing demands. We find that when decisions require computation of spatial distances for navigation options, but also evaluation of one's prior spatial navigation ability with the task, the estimated value of navigational choices (EV) modulates neural activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal (dmPFC) cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal (vlFPC) cortex. However, superior parietal cortex tracked EV when decision-making tasks only require spatial distance memory but not evaluation of spatial navigation ability. Our findings reveal divergent neural substrates of memory integration in value-based decision-making under different spatial processing demands.
在日常生活中,我们常常根据选项的相对价值做出决策,而这些价值通常来源于对过去事件结果的分割或整合。文献中已经广泛研究了基于价值的决策所涉及的神经相关性,但很少有研究调查需要分割或整合来自相关来源的情景记忆的决策中的这个主题,更少的研究在空间导航的背景下研究它。基于我们之前研究中的计算模型,本研究调查了在不同虚拟空间导航任务中涉及不同目标的寻路结果的分割或整合决策中涉及的神经基质,这些任务对空间导航的要求不同。我们发现,当决策需要计算导航选项的空间距离,同时评估任务中先前的空间导航能力时,导航选择的估计价值(EV)调节背内侧前额叶(dmPFC)皮质和腹外侧前额叶(vlFPC)皮质中的神经活动。然而,当决策任务仅需要空间距离记忆而不需要评估空间导航能力时,顶下小叶皮层则跟踪 EV。我们的发现揭示了不同空间处理需求下基于价值的决策中记忆整合的不同神经基质。