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How humans integrate the prospects of pain and reward during choice.

ABSTRACT: The maxim "no pain, no gain" summarizes scenarios in which an action leading to reward also entails a cost. Although we know a substantial amount about how the brain represents pain and reward separately, we know little about how they are integrated during goal-directed behavior. Two theoretical models might account for the integration of reward and pain. An additive model specifies that the disutility of costs is summed linearly with the utility of benefits, whereas an interactive model suggests that cost and benefit utilities interact so that the sensitivity to benefits is attenuated as costs become increasingly aversive. Using a novel task that required integration of physical pain and monetary reward, we examined the mechanism underlying cost-benefit integration in humans. We provide evidence in support of an interactive model in behavioral choice. Using functional neuroimaging, we identify a neural signature for this interaction such that, when the consequences of actions embody a mixture of reward and pain, there is an attenuation of a predictive reward signal in both ventral anterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum. We conclude that these regions subserve integration of action costs and benefits in humans, a finding that suggests a cross-species similarity in neural substrates that implement this function and illuminates mechanisms that underlie altered decision making under aversive conditions.

SUBMITTER: Talmi D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2948535 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How humans integrate the prospects of pain and reward during choice.

Talmi Deborah D Dayan Peter P Kiebel Stefan J SJ Frith Chris D CD Dolan Raymond J RJ

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 20091101 46

The maxim "no pain, no gain" summarizes scenarios in which an action leading to reward also entails a cost. Although we know a substantial amount about how the brain represents pain and reward separately, we know little about how they are integrated during goal-directed behavior. Two theoretical models might account for the integration of reward and pain. An additive model specifies that the disutility of costs is summed linearly with the utility of benefits, whereas an interactive model suggest ...[more]

PMID: 19923294

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Project description:Choice history effects describe how future choices depend on the history of past choices. In experimental tasks this is typically framed as a bias because it often diminishes the experienced reward rates. However, in natural habitats, choices made in the past constrain choices that can be made in the future. For foraging animals, the probability of earning a reward in a given patch depends on the degree to which the animals have exploited the patch in the past. One problem with many experimental tasks that show choice history effects is that such tasks artificially decouple choice history from its consequences on reward availability over time. To circumvent this, we use a variable interval (VI) reward schedule that reinstates a more natural contingency between past choices and future reward availability. By examining the behavior of optimal agents in the VI task we discover that choice history effects observed in animals serve to maximize reward harvesting efficiency. We further distil the function of choice history effects by manipulating first- and second-order statistics of the environment. We find that choice history effects primarily reflect the growth rate of the reward probability of the unchosen option, whereas reward history effects primarily reflect environmental volatility. Based on observed choice history effects in animals, we develop a reinforcement learning model that explicitly incorporates choice history over multiple time scales into the decision process, and we assess its predictive adequacy in accounting for the associated behavior. We show that this new variant, known as the double trace model, has a higher performance in predicting choice data, and shows near optimal reward harvesting efficiency in simulated environments. These results suggests that choice history effects may be adaptive for natural contingencies between consumption and reward availability. This concept lends credence to a normative account of choice history effects that extends beyond its description as a bias.

Dataset Information

How humans integrate the prospects of pain and reward during choice.

Publications

How humans integrate the prospects of pain and reward during choice.

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