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Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex.

ABSTRACT: Nervous systems must encode information about the identity of expected outcomes to make adaptive decisions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying identity-specific value signaling remain poorly understood. By manipulating the value and identity of appetizing food odors in a pattern-based imaging paradigm of human classical conditioning, we were able to identify dissociable predictive representations of identity-specific reward in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and identity-general reward in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Reward-related functional coupling between OFC and olfactory (piriform) cortex and between vmPFC and amygdala revealed parallel pathways that support identity-specific and -general predictive signaling. The demonstration of identity-specific value representations in OFC highlights a role for this region in model-based behavior and reveals mechanisms by which appetitive behavior can go awry.

SUBMITTER: Howard JD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4413264 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex.

Howard James D JD Gottfried Jay A JA Tobler Philippe N PN Kahnt Thorsten T

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20150406 16

Nervous systems must encode information about the identity of expected outcomes to make adaptive decisions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying identity-specific value signaling remain poorly understood. By manipulating the value and identity of appetizing food odors in a pattern-based imaging paradigm of human classical conditioning, we were able to identify dissociable predictive representations of identity-specific reward in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and identity-general reward in vent ...[more]

PMID: 25848032

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Project description:Cues that reliably predict rewards trigger the thoughts and emotions normally evoked by those rewards. Humans and other animals will work, often quite hard, for these cues. This is termed conditioned reinforcement. The ability to use conditioned reinforcers to guide our behaviour is normally beneficial; however, it can go awry. For example, corporate icons, such as McDonald's Golden Arches, influence consumer behaviour in powerful and sometimes surprising ways, and drug-associated cues trigger relapse to drug seeking in addicts and animals exposed to addictive drugs, even after abstinence or extinction. Yet, despite their prevalence, it is not known how conditioned reinforcers control human or other animal behaviour. One possibility is that they act through the use of the specific rewards they predict; alternatively, they could control behaviour directly by activating emotions that are independent of any specific reward. In other words, the Golden Arches may drive business because they evoke thoughts of hamburgers and fries, or instead, may be effective because they also evoke feelings of hunger or happiness. Moreover, different brain circuits could support conditioned reinforcement mediated by thoughts of specific outcomes versus more general affective information. Here we have attempted to address these questions in rats. Rats were trained to learn that different cues predicted different rewards using specialized conditioning procedures that controlled whether the cues evoked thoughts of specific outcomes or general affective representations common to different outcomes. Subsequently, these rats were given the opportunity to press levers to obtain short and otherwise unrewarded presentations of these cues. We found that rats were willing to work for cues that evoked either outcome-specific or general affective representations. Furthermore the orbitofrontal cortex, a prefrontal region important for adaptive decision-making, was critical for the former but not for the latter form of conditioned reinforcement.

Dataset Information

Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex.

Publications

Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex.

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