The role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in abstract state-based inference during decision making in humans
Open accessAbstract
Many real-life decision-making problems incorporate higher-order structure, involving interdependencies between different stimuli, actions, and subsequent rewards. It is not known whether brain regions implicated in decision making, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), use a stored model of the task structure to guide choice (model-based decision making) or merely learn action or state values without assuming higher-order structure as in standard reinforcement learning. To discriminate between these possibilities, we scanned human subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a simple decision-making task with higher-order structure, probabilistic reversal learning. We found that neural activity in a key decision-making region, the vmPFC, was more consistent with a computational model that exploits higher-order structure than with simple reinforcement learning. These results suggest that brain regions, such as the vmPFC, use an abstract model of task structure to guide behavioral choice, computations that may underlie the human capacity for complex social interactions and abstract strategizing.
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In previous studies on healthy adults, neural correlates of RPEs in probabilistic reversal learning tasks positively correlated with striatal and ventromedial prefrontal areas and negatively correlated with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and anterior insula.
“The neural correlates of RPEs in probabilistic reversal learning tasks have been successfully examined in previous studies on healthy adults and found to positively correlate with mainly striatal and ventromedial prefrontal areas, and to negatively correlate with areas such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula (Gläscher et al., 2009; Hampton et al., 2006; Hauser et al., 201”
From Cognitive flexibility in adolescence: Neural and behavioral mechanisms of reward prediction error processing in adaptive decision making during development (2015) · cites this paper as Hampton et al., 2006
There is much work in humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents suggesting that ventral orbitofrontal cortex plays a key role in representing the values that underpin goal-directed control.
“Indeed, there has been much work in humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents suggesting that this region plays a key role in representing the sort of values that underpin goal-directed control (Daw et al., 2006b; Gottfried and Dolan, 2004; Hampton et al., 2006; Padoa-Schioppa and Assad, 2006; Schoenbaum and Roesch, 2005; Thorpe et al., 1983).”
From Goals and Habits in the Brain (2013) · cites this paper as Hampton et al., 2006
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References 39 · Cited by 498
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Luce DR (2003) Response times. New York: Oxford UP.
- Authors
- Hampton, A. N., Bossaerts, P., & O’Doherty, J. P.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2006-08-09
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 32
- Pages
- 8360-8367
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6673813
- OpenAlex
- W2041639631
- Cited by
- 498
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 42 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 14.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- California Institute of Technology
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- ventromedial prefrontal cortex, model-based decision making, probabilistic reversal learning, reinforcement learning, decision-making, social cognition
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Brain Mapping, Cognition, Decision Making, Discrimination Learning, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reversal Learning, Task Performance and Analysis, Prefrontal Cortex
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