QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, September 16, 2009, 29(37):11471-11483; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1815-09.2009

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Morrison, S. E. Articles by Salzman, C. D. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Morrison, S. E. Articles by Salzman, C. D.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
The Convergence of Information about Rewarding and Aversive Stimuli in Single Neurons

Sara E. Morrison¹ and C. Daniel Salzman^1,2,3,4,5,6

Departments of ¹Neuroscience and ²Psychiatry, ³W.M. Keck Center on Brain Plasticity and Cognition, ⁴Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, and ⁵Mahoney Center for Brain and Behavior, Columbia University, and ⁶New York State Psychiatric Institute, NewYork, New York 10032

Correspondence should be addressed to C. Daniel Salzman, Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 87, Kolb Research Building, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 5-67, New York, NY 10032. Email: cds2005{at}columbia.edu

Neuroscientists, psychologists, clinicians, and economists have long been interested in how individuals weigh information about potential rewarding and aversive stimuli to make decisions and to regulate their emotions. However, we know relatively little about how appetitive and aversive systems interact in the brain, as most prior studies have investigated only one valence of reinforcement. Previous work has suggested that primate orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) represents information about the reward value of stimuli. We therefore investigated whether OFC also represents information about aversive stimuli, and, if so, whether individual neurons process information about both rewarding and aversive stimuli. Monkeys performed a trace conditioning task in which different novel abstract visual stimuli (conditioned stimuli, CSs) predicted the occurrence of one of three unconditioned stimuli (USs): a large liquid reward, a small liquid reward, or an aversive air-puff. Three lines of evidence suggest that information about rewarding and aversive stimuli converges in individual neurons in OFC. First, OFC neurons often responded to both rewarding and aversive USs, despite their different sensory features. Second, OFC neural responses to CSs often encoded information about both potential rewarding and aversive stimuli, even though these stimuli differed in both valence and sensory modality. Finally, OFC neural responses were correlated with monkeys' behavioral use of information about both rewarding and aversive CS-US associations. These data indicate that processing of appetitive and aversive stimuli converges at the single cell level in OFC, providing a possible substrate for executive and emotional processes that require using information from both appetitive and aversive systems.

---

Received April 15, 2009; revised July 8, 2009; accepted Aug. 3, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to C. Daniel Salzman, Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 87, Kolb Research Building, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 5-67, New York, NY 10032. Email: cds2005{at}columbia.edu

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help