Prefrontal mechanisms combining rewards and beliefs in human decision-making.

ABSTRACT: In uncertain and changing environments, optimal decision-making requires integrating reward expectations with probabilistic beliefs about reward contingencies. Little is known, however, about how the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which subserves decision-making, combines these quantities. Here, using computational modelling and neuroimaging, we show that the ventromedial PFC encodes both reward expectations and proper beliefs about reward contingencies, while the dorsomedial PFC combines these quantities and guides choices that are at variance with those predicted by optimal decision theory: instead of integrating reward expectations with beliefs, the dorsomedial PFC built context-dependent reward expectations commensurable to beliefs and used these quantities as two concurrent appetitive compo

SUBMITTER: Rouault M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6336816 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature