Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Lipschultz Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA.
Neuron. 2024 Jul 3;112(13):2241-2256.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.03.020. Epub 2024 Apr 18.
Individual preferences for the flavor of different foods and fluids exert a strong influence on behavior. Most current theories posit that preferences are integrated with other state variables in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is thought to derive the relative subjective value of available options to guide choice behavior. Here, we report that instead of a single integrated valuation system in the OFC, another complementary one is centered in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) in macaques. Specifically, we found that the OFC and vlPFC preferentially represent outcome flavor and outcome probability, respectively, and that preferences are separately integrated into value representations in these areas. In addition, the vlPFC, but not the OFC, represented the probability of receiving the available outcome flavors separately, with the difference between these representations reflecting the degree of preference for each flavor. Thus, both the vlPFC and OFC exhibit dissociable but complementary representations of subjective value, both of which are necessary for decision-making.
个体对不同食物和液体味道的偏好强烈影响行为。大多数现有理论假设，偏好与眶额皮层（OFC）中的其他状态变量整合在一起，OFC 被认为可以得出可用选项的相对主观价值，从而指导选择行为。在这里，我们报告说，在猕猴的外侧前额叶皮层（vlPFC）中存在另一个互补的系统，而不是 OFC 中的单一综合估值系统。具体来说，我们发现 OFC 和 vlPFC 分别优先表示结果味道和结果概率，并且偏好分别在这些区域中整合到价值表示中。此外，vlPFC（而不是 OFC）分别表示可用结果味道的概率，这些表示之间的差异反映了对每种味道的偏好程度。因此，vlPFC 和 OFC 都表现出可分离但互补的主观价值表示，这两者对于决策都是必要的。
