Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been studied extensively using effort-based decision-making (EBDM) paradigms and has been shown to track effort costs. However, it remains unclear whether the dACC encodes objective measures of effort, such as energy expenditure, or subjective perceptions of effort. Further, prior EBDM research in humans has focused on artificial, seated tasks like gripping hand dynamometers, which 1) do not accurately reflect real-world effort demands and 2) are limited by fMRI's temporal resolution, making it difficult to link neural activity to behavior. To

…value (ventral striatum, posterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex) from salience (anterior ventromedial cortex, occipital cortex

…Specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is heavily involved in WM processes, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a crucial role in stress regulation and has been associated with positive emotions during stress recovery. Given these findings, we aimed to determine the most effective stimulation region for alleviating WM deficits caused by psychologic

…We propose the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)-dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) circuit as the key player underlying depressive/anxious disorders in PD, by virtue of its reciprocal connectivity. Female mice overe

…and changes in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity in MDD, which appear to be related to antidepressant treatment response. Here, we quantified miRNA expression by small RNA sequencing in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) of individuals with MDD/suicide and healthy controls. miRNA

…rely on a neural network involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), hippocampus and visuoperceptual cortex. Whereas these brain regions have been associated with mental event construction earlier, the precise contributions of each node are hotly debated. For example, the vmPFC is usually associated with abstract, schema-like mental events, however we proposed earlier that the vmPFC may initiate and elaborate vivid, detail-rich mental events. The

Human dietary preferences vary highly between individuals yet also conform to common principles. However, the neural encoding of specific nutrient and oral-sensory food properties and related decision-making are poorly understood. This investigation of human food choice sought to elucidate these mechanisms by utilising behavioural and neuroimaging techniques while participants tasted, evaluated, and selected specifically designed liquid foods, where food information was derived exclusively from oral sampling. Healthy, human participants (N = 42) provided valuations (as willingness-to-pay (WTP)

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced, but the fields of social and decision neuroscience have contributed surprisingly little to our understanding of pro-environmental behavior. Across two studies, we adapted a well-established paradigm developed to study effortful prosocial behavior to investigate pro-environmental behavior. In study one, 74 participants engaged in a decision-making task, where they could earn a varying amount of money for themselves or a pro-environmental organization by investing a varying amount of physical force (measured by a hand-grip

Current models of behavioral performance are based on a cost/benefit analysis that ignores the impact of intrinsic motivation. Here we conceive intrinsic / extrinsic motivation as being driven by the value of the action itself (e.g., learning good stuff) / the value of the action outcome (e.g., getting a good mark). We propose that, unlike extrinsically motivated actions (for which the reward is delayed), intrinsically motivated actions (for which the reward is concomitant) may not require the exertion of effortful cognitive control.We developed a test where participants memorize and retrieve

…populations of neurons recorded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC

Humans and other animals make decisions in order to satisfy their goals. However, it remains unknown how neural circuits compute which of multiple possible goals should be pursued (e.g., when balancing hunger and thirst) and how to combine these signals with estimates of available reward alternatives. Here, humans undergoing fMRI accumulated two distinct assets over a sequence of trials. Financial outcomes depended on the minimum cumulate of either asset, creating a need to maintain “value equilibrium” by redressing any imbalance among the assets. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signals in

A central issue in reinforcement learning (RL) is the ‘curse-of-dimensionality’, arising when the degrees-of-freedom are much larger than the number of training samples. In such circumstances, the learning process becomes too slow to be plausible. In the brain, higher cognitive functions (such as abstraction or metacognition) may be part of the solution by generating low dimensional representations on which RL can operate. In this talk I will discuss a series of studies in which we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modeling to investigate the neuro-computation

Autobiographical memories are the ghosts of our past. Through them we visit places long departed, see faces once familiar, and hear voices now silent. These, often decades-old, personal experiences can be recalled on a whim or come unbidden into our everyday consciousness. Autobiographical memories are crucial to cognition because they facilitate almost everything we do, endow us with a sense of self and underwrite our capacity for autonomy. They are often compromised by common neurological and psychiatric pathologies with devastating effects. Despite autobiographical memories being central t